beard

UK/bɪəd/US/bɪɹd/

nounB1Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,098 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: beards

A beard is the hair that grows on a man's chin and cheeks. Trimmed, shaped, or left to do as it likes.

English distinguishes carefully between the varieties: a moustache is the upper lip only, sideburns run down in front of the ears, and stubble is a beard three days old. Growing one is growing a beard, and removing it is shaving it off. The adjective bearded describes the man. There is a rare verb meaning to confront somebody boldly, preserved in the phrase bearding the lion in his den.

Definitions of beard

1nounbeardThe hair growing on the chin and cheeks.B1
“He had grown a short grey beard.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*bʰardʰéh₂
Middle English
berd
English, today
beard

From Middle English berd. From Middle English berd, bard, bærd, from Old English beard, from Proto-West Germanic bard, from Proto-Germanic bardaz, from Proto-Indo-European bʰardʰeh₂, bʰh₂erdʰeh₂. 2

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

beard in the wild

ZZ Top returned in 1979 with a new musical direction and image, with Gibbons and Hill wearing sunglasses and matching chest-length beards.
ZZ Top
A beard is the hair that grows on the jaw, chin, upper lip, lower lip, cheeks, and neck of humans and some non-human animals.
Beard
In humans, beards are most common among pubescent and adult males, though some women also develop them in a condition called hirsutism.
Beard
The style is sometimes called a "Charlie" after King Charles I of England, who was painted with this type of beard by van Dyck.
Van Dyke beard

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary