Beady means small, round and bright, said of eyes. Beady eyes, a beady stare, beady little eyes.
It is nearly always unfriendly of a person — beady eyes suggest watchfulness and calculation — and simply descriptive of a bird or a rat. Keep a beady eye on means watch closely. Note bead, and that the shape and shine of a glass bead are exactly the image.
1adjectivebeadySmall, round and bright, said of eyes.
“The crow watched us from the fence with its beady black eyes.”
beady is a quality of eyes.
Proto-Indo-European
*gʷʰedʰ-
Proto-Germanic
*bedō
Proto-West Germanic
*bedu
Old English
bedu
Middle English
bede — a prayer
English
bead
English, today
beady
Built from
From bead + -y. bead comes from Middle English bede (“a prayer”), also “a bead for counting prayers” in a peire of bedes literally “a pair of beads”, from Old English bedu, bed, ġebed (“a request, entreaty, prayer”), from Proto-West Germanic bedu, bed, gabed, from Proto-Germanic bedō, bedą. Cognate with stq Gebäd (“prayer”), cim gapéet (“prayer”), Dutch gebed and bede (“prayer”), German Gebet (“prayer”), Low German Gebett (“prayer”), lb Gebiet (“prayer”), wym gybāt (“prayer”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA