bean

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Any of various New World twining herbs of the genus Phaseolus in the pea family, having leaves with three leaflets, variously colored flowers, and edible pods and seeds.
2. n. A seed or pod of any of these plants.
3. n. Any of several related plants or their seeds or pods, such as the adzuki bean, broad bean, or soybean.
4. n. Any of various other plants or their seeds or fruits, especially those suggestive of beans, such as the coffee bean or the vanilla bean.
5. n. Slang A person's head.
6. n. Slang A small amount: I don't know beans about investing.
7. n. Chiefly British A fellow; a chap.
8. v. Slang To hit (another) on the head with a thrown object, especially a pitched baseball.
9. idiom. full of beans Energetic; frisky: The children were too full of beans to sit still.
10. idiom. full of beans Badly mistaken: Don't believe him; he's full of beans.
11. idiom. spill the beans To disclose a secret.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Originally and properly, a smooth kidney-shaped seed, flattened at the sides, borne in long pods by a leguminous plant, Vicia Faba; now extended to include the seed of the allied genus Phaseolus, and, with a specific epithet, of other genera.
2. n. The plant producing beans. The bean known to the ancients from prehistoric times was the Vicia Faba (or Faba vulgaris), a native of western Asia, and the same as the field-, horse-, or tick-bean, and the broad or Windsor bean, still largely cultivated in the fields and gardens of the old world. It is used when green as a table-vegetable, and when dry as feed for horses and sheep. The numerous other kinds of cultivated beans are of American origin, and belong chiefly to the genus Phaseolus. To P. vulgaris belong the common kidney-bean, and the haricot and French beans, the string-bean, and the pole-bean; to P. lunatus, the Lima and Carolina beans, the sugar-bean, and the butter-bean; and to P. nanus, the dwarf, field-, bush-, navy-, pea-, and six-weeks beans. To the same genus belong the wild kidney-bean, P. perennis; the scarlet-runner bean, P. multiflorus, cultivated for its scarlet flowers; and the prairie-bean of Texas, P. retusus. The asparagus-bean, Dolichos sesquipedalis, with very long cylindrical pods, frequently cultivated in Europe, is a native of tropical America. Beans as an article of food are very nutritious, containing much starch and a large percentage of a nitrogenous compound called legumin, analogous to the casein in cheese. The name bean is also given to many leguminous seeds which are not cultivated or used as food, such as the algarroba, Calabar, and coral beans, and to certain other plants and their seeds which are not leguminous at all, as the coffee-bean.
3. n. A small oval or roundish seed, berry, nut, or lump: as, a coffee-bean.
4. n. plural In coal-mining, small coals; specifically, coals which will pass through a screen with half-inch meshes.
5. n. plural Money.
6. See bein.
7. n. The seed of the bean-tree or Moreton Hay chestnut, Castanospermum australe, which, though poisonous when green, is rendered harmless by cooking and forms part of the diet of the aborigines.

Wiktionary

1. n. The large edible seed of plants of several genera of Fabaceae.
2. n. The seed pod of plants of several genera of Fabaceae.
3. n. A bean-like seed of some other plants, especially coffee; coffee in the general.
4. n. Stuffing for beanbags and similar items, often made from plastic and resembling a pea or bean in shape.
5. n. The head or brain.
6. n. A guinea coin.
7. n. Money.
8. v. To hit deliberately with a projectile, especially in the head.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A name given to the seed of certain leguminous herbs, chiefly of the genera Faba, Phaseolus, and Dolichos; also, to the herbs.
2. n. The popular name of other vegetable seeds or fruits, more or less resembling true beans.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. any of various edible seeds of plants of the family Leguminosae used for food
2. n. any of various seeds or fruits that are beans or resemble beans
3. n. informal terms for a human head
4. n. any of various leguminous plants grown for their edible seeds and pods
5. v. hit on the head, especially with a pitched baseball