beaver

English Online Dictionary. What means beaver‎? What does beaver mean?

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈbiːvə/
• (General American) enPR: bēʹvər, IPA^(key): /ˈbivɚ/
• Rhymes: -iːvə(ɹ)
• Homophones: Belvoir, bever, bevor

Etymology 1

From Middle English bever, from Old English befer, from Proto-West Germanic *bebru, from Proto-Germanic *bebruz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰébʰrus (“beaver”).

Cognate with West Frisian bever, Dutch bever, French bièvre, German Biber, dialectal Swedish bjur. Non-Germanic cognates include Welsh befer, Latin fiber, Lithuanian bẽbras, Russian бобр (bobr), Avestan 𐬠𐬀𐬎𐬎𐬭𐬀 (bauura), and Sanskrit बभ्रु (bábhru, “mongoose; ichneumon”).

Slang use to refer to a woman evolved from use to refer to pubic hair, which evolved from use to refer to beards, which evolved from use to refer to the furry animal or its fur.

Noun

beaver (countable and uncountable, plural beavers or (senses 1 and 4) beaver)

2. (countable) A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor within the family Castoridae, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet.
3. The fur of the beaver.

   Synonym: castorette

4. (countable) A hat, of various shapes, made from a felted beaver fur (or later of silk), fashionable in Europe between 1550 and 1850.

   Synonyms: castor, (archaic) castoreum
5. (Canada, US) Beaver pelts as an article of exchange or as a standard of value.
6. Beaver cloth, a heavy felted woollen cloth, used chiefly for making overcoats.

   Synonym: castor

7. A brown colour, like that of a beaver.

   Synonyms: beaver brown, castor

8. (countable, backgammon) A move in response to being doubled, in which one immediately doubles the stakes again, keeping the doubling cube on one’s own side of the board.
10. Alternative letter-case form of Beaver (“member of the youngest wing of the Scout movement”).
12. (countable, slang) A beard or a bearded person.

    Synonyms: beard, beardo, beardy
14. (uncountable, historical, slang) A game, in which points are scored by spotting beards.
16. (chiefly Canada, US, slang, countable) The pubic hair near a vulva or a vulva itself; (attributively) denoting films or literature featuring nude women.

    Synonyms: beav, (vulgar) nest
17. (US, offensive, slang) A woman, especially one who is sexually attractive.

Alternative forms

• (beard-spotting game): Beaver

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Animals

Verb

beaver (third-person singular simple present beavers, present participle beavering, simple past and past participle beavered)

1. To form a felt-like texture, similar to the way beaver fur is used for felt-making.
3. To work hard.
4. (logging, slang) To cut a continuous ring around a tree that one is felling.
5. (backgammon) After being doubled, to immediately double the stakes again, a move that keeps the doubling cube on one’s own side of the board.
6. (slang) To spot a beard in a game of beaver.

Usage notes

Sense 2 is most frequently used in constructions such as beaver around, beaver away, and beaver on.

Derived terms

• beaver away

Etymology 2

See bevor.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers)

2. Alternative spelling of bevor (“part of a helmet”).
   • 1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XII, lxvii:

     With trembling hands her beaver he untied, / Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face.

   • 1951 Adaptation of the 1885 Ormsby translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, correcting Ormsby as to the portion of the helmet referred to by Cervantes (see note 11 to chapter II) at the suggestion of Juan Hartzenbusch, a 19th-century director of the National Library of Spain.

     They laid a table for him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughble sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him.

Etymology 3

Noun

beaver (UK, thieves' cant, obsolete)

1. Butter.

References

• “beaver, n.¹”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2022.
• “beaver, n.³”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, December 2021.
• “beaver, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, September 2022.
• “beaver n.²”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present, retrieved December 2, 2022.

Further reading

• Castor on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• Category:Castor on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• The Manual of Heraldry, Fifth Edition, by Anonymous, London, 1862, online at [5]