n. Prayer; a prayer; specifically, a prayer of the list or bead-roll, read at public church-services by the preacher before his sermon, or by the curate (see bead-roll): usually in the plural.n. One of the little balls, of wood, cocoanut-shell, pearl, glass, jewels, or other material, strung in a prescribed order, which form the chaplet or rosary in use in the devotions of Roman Catholics, Buddhists, etc., to keep count of the number of prayers said. See pair of beads, below.n. Anything resembling a rosary-bead, strung with others for ornament, as in necklaces or beadwork: as, glass, amber, metal, coral, or other beads.n. Any small globular, cylindrical, or annular body, as the small projecting piece of metal at the end of a gun-barrel used as a sight, a drop of liquid, etc.n. One of the circular markings of certain diatoms.n. The bubble or mass of bubbles rising to the top or resting on the surface of a liquid when shaken or decanted: as, the bead of wines or spirits.n. A glass globule for trying the strength of alcoholic spirits.n. In mineralogy, in the blowpipe examination of minerals, a globule of borax or other flux which is supported on a platinum wire, and in which the substance under examination is dissolved in the blowpipe flame.n. In arch. and joinery, a small convex molding, in section a semicircle or greater than a semicircle; properly, a plain molding, but often synonymous with astragal, which is better reserved for a small convex molding cut into the form of a string of beads.n. In bookbinding, shoemaking, etc., any cord-like prominence, as the roll on the head-band of a book, the seam of a shoe, etc.n. that is, “set of beads” (), a rosary; now, specifically, a chaplet of five decades, that is, a third part of the rosary. A chaplet or pair of beads, as thus restricted, is the form in common use under the name of the beads. The large beads between the decades were formerly called gaudies (see gaud, gaudy); each separate bead, or grain, as it is now termed, Tyndale calls a stone.n. literally, to offer (one's) prayers; hence the later equivalent phrases to say or recite (one's) beads, now with reference, as literally in the phrase to tell (one's) beads, to counting off prayers by means of the beads on the rosary. The phrases to count and to number (one's) beads are merely literary.To ornament with beads; raise beads upon.n. In weaving, a roughness of yarn due to fraying by friction or rubbing.