beetled

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past tense and past participle of beetle.

   He beetled across the platform to grab the last empty seat.

   The gray cliffs beetled over the narrow path far below.

   Note

   One spelling serves several unrelated verbs, and only context tells them apart. He beetled off is the quick, scurrying sense. Cliffs beetled over the path is the jutting one, which works with or without an object. Something that has been beetled was beaten with a heavy mallet or hammered in a beetling machine. Before a noun, as in beetled brows, the word is the overhanging adjective instead.

2. 2
   adjective

   Projecting outward and over something underneath, as an overhanging cliff or a jutting brow.

   Like the brim of a cap jutting out over your eyes.

   The beetled cliffs loomed above the small fishing village.

   His beetled brows shadowed a pair of deep-set, watchful eyes.

   Similarprojecting

   Note

   An all-or-nothing adjective: a cliff or a brow either overhangs or it does not, so it takes neither more nor most. It sits close to the verb's past form, which can describe the same jutting. The adjective, however, fixes the overhang as a lasting feature of the thing rather than something it did.

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