belled

1. 1
   adjective

   Fitted with a bell, usually so the wearer or object can be heard or located.

   The belled harness let the shepherd track each goat across the hillside.

   Morris dancers wore belled bands around their ankles that jingled with every step.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of bell.

   The shepherd belled the goats before the spring migration.

   Each cat in the shelter was belled to protect the local birds.

   Note

   One spelling serves a whole family of verbs. Belled can mean that a bell was fastened on, or that something was shaped to flare like a bell. Those are the two uses behind the adjectives. It can also mean that a flower came into bloom, that someone bellowed, or, in slang, that someone phoned: "she belled me last night." Only the transitive uses form passives such as "the cat was belled."

3. 3
   adjective

   Fitted with bells, especially around the neck of an animal.

   The belled cows filled the valley with a gentle clatter at dusk.

   A belled hawk perched on the falconer's glove, its tiny bells chiming.

   Note

   Heraldry uses it in blazon, the formal language that describes a coat of arms. The word follows the creature it applies to and is followed by the color of the bells. Arthur Charles Fox-Davies's Armorial Families (1910) gives three falcons "belled gules," meaning they wear red bells. Unlike the everyday sense, the word here describes how a creature is drawn, not an object that rings.

4. 4
   adjective

   Made with a wider, hollow end so that another pipe or part can fit into it.

   Each belled section accepts the spigot of the pipe below it.

   The drainpipe's belled end was sealed with a rubber gasket.

   Similarflared

   Note

   Here the bell is a shape, not a sound. The end of a pipe or tube widens into a socket, much as the verb bell can mean shaping something to flare like a bell. Its working opposite is plain, as in a pipe with one belled and one plain end. The plain end of one pipe slides into the belled end of the next to make a bell-and-spigot joint.

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