beard

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The hair on a man's chin, cheeks, and throat.
2. n. A hairy or hairlike growth such as that on or near the face of certain mammals.
3. n. A tuft or group of hairs or bristles on certain plants, such as barley and wheat.
4. n. One who serves to divert suspicion or attention from another.
5. n. Printing The raised slope on a piece of type between the shoulder or counter and the face. Also called neck.
6. v. To furnish with a beard.
7. v. To confront boldly.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The close growth of hair on the chin and parts of the face normally characteristic of an adult man; more specifically, the hair of the face and chin when allowed to remain wholly or in part unshaved, that on the upper lip being distinguished as the mustache, and the remainder as the whiskers, or the side-whiskers, chin-whiskers or -beard, etc., according as the beard is trimmed: as, to wear a beard, or a full beard.
2. n. In zoöl., some part or appendage likened to the human beard. In mammalogy, long hairs about the head, as on a goat's chin, etc.
3. n. In botany: A crest, tuft, or covering of spreading hairs, The awn or bristle-like appendage upon the chaff of grain and other grasses. See cut under barley. With some authors, a name given to the lower lip of a ringent corolla.
4. n. A barb or sharp process of an arrow, a fish-hook, or other instrument, bent backward from the point, to prevent it from being easily drawn out.
5. n. The hook for retaining the yarn at the extremity of the needle in a knitting-machine.
6. n. In organ-building, a spring-piece on the back of a lock-bolt to hold it moderately firm and prevent it from rattling in its guides.
7. n. The part of a horse which bears the curb of a bridle, underneath the lower mandible and above the chin.
8. n. The train of a comet when the comet is receding from the sun (in which case the train precedes the head).
9. n. In printing, the outward-sloping part of a type which connects the face with the shoulder of the body. It is obsolete, type being now made with high square shoulders, to lighten the work of the electrotyper.
10. n. The sharp edge of a board.
11. n. in Egyptian antiquity, a singular artificial beard, often represented on monuments and mummy-cases, held under the chin by bands attached to the wearer's casque or head-dress.
12. To take by the beard; seize, pluck, or pull the beard of, in contempt or anger.
13. Figuratively, to oppose to the face; set at defiance.
14. To furnish with a beard, in any sense of the word.
15. In carpentry, to chip, plane, or otherwise diminish from a given line or to a given curve: as, to beard clamps, plank-sheers, etc.; in ship-building, to round, as the adjacent parts of the rudder and stern-post, or the dead-wood, so as to adapt them to the shape of the vessel.
16. To remove the beard or fringe from, as from oysters.
17. To grow a beard, or become bearded.
18. n. Also, a projecting flap of metal soldered to a pipe close to its mouth to improve its “speech.” Beards are common on either side of the mouth, and in some kinds of pipe are carried across below the mouth as well. The former are side-beards, the latter cross-beards.
19. n. plural A breed of pigeons of which the most distinctive character is a crescent-shaped patch of white on the throat just below the beak.

Wiktionary

1. n. Facial hair on the chin, cheeks and jaw.
2. n. LGBT, slang A woman who accompanies a gay male in order to give the impression that he is heterosexual.
3. v. obsolete To grow hair on the chin and jaw.
4. v. To boldly and bravely oppose or confront, often to the chagrin of the one being bearded.
5. v. transitive To take by the beard; to seize, pluck, or pull the beard of (a man), in anger or contempt.
6. v. transitive To deprive (an oyster or similar shellfish) of the gills.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The hair that grows on the chin, lips, and adjacent parts of the human face, chiefly of male adults.
2. n. The long hairs about the face in animals, as in the goat.
3. n. The cluster of small feathers at the base of the beak in some birds.
4. n. The appendages to the jaw in some Cetacea, and to the mouth or jaws of some fishes.
5. n. The byssus of certain shellfish, as the muscle.
6. n. The gills of some bivalves, as the oyster.
7. n. In insects, the hairs of the labial palpi of moths and butterflies.
8. n. (Bot.) Long or stiff hairs on a plant; the awn.
9. n. A barb or sharp point of an arrow or other instrument, projecting backward to prevent the head from being easily drawn out.
10. n. That part of the under side of a horse's lower jaw which is above the chin, and bears the curb of a bridle.
11. n. (Print.) That part of a type which is between the shoulder of the shank and the face.
12. n. obsolete An imposition; a trick.
13. v. To take by the beard; to seize, pluck, or pull the beard of (a man), in anger or contempt.
14. v. To oppose to the face; to set at defiance.
15. v. To deprive of the gills; -- used only of oysters and similar shellfish.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. hairy growth on or near the face of certain mammals
2. n. tuft of strong filaments by which e.g. a mussel makes itself fast to a fixed surface
3. v. go along the rim, like a beard around the chin
4. n. the hair growing on the lower part of a man's face
5. n. a person who diverts suspicion from someone (especially a woman who accompanies a male homosexual in order to conceal his homosexuality)
6. n. a tuft or growth of hairs or bristles on certain plants such as iris or grasses