• A small, often round piece of material, such as glass, plastic, or wood, that is pierced for stringing or threading.
• A necklace made of such pieces.
• Roman Catholic Church A rosary.
• Obsolete A prayer. Often used in the plural.
• A small, round object, especially:
• A drop of moisture: beads of sweat.
• A bubble of gas in a liquid.
• A small metal knob on the muzzle of a firearm, such as a rifle, used for sighting.
• A strip of material, usually wood, with one molded edge placed flush against the inner part of a door or window frame.
• Architecture A decoration consisting of a usually continuous series of small spherical shapes, as on a convex molding.
• Architecture Beading.
• A projecting rim or lip, as on a pneumatic tire.
• A line of continuously applied ductile material, such as solder or caulking compound.
• Chemistry A globule of fused borax or other flux used in a bead test.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. In weaving, a roughness of yarn due to fraying by friction or rubbing.
2. Prayer; a prayer; specifically, a prayer of the list or bead-roll, read at public church-services by the preacher before his sermon, or by the curate (see bead-roll): usually in the plural. Hence, in this sense, to bid (one's) beads, to say (one's) prayers. See phrases below.
3. One of the little balls, of wood, cocoanut-shell, pearl, glass, jewels, or other material, strung in a prescribed order, which form the chaplet or rosary in use in the devotions of Roman Catholics, Buddhists, etc., to keep count of the number of prayers said. See pair of beads, below.
4. Anything resembling a rosary-bead, strung with others for ornament, as in necklaces or beadwork: as, glass, amber, metal, coral, or other beads.
5. Any small globular, cylindrical, or annular body, as the small projecting piece of metal at the end of a gun-barrel used as a sight, a drop of liquid, etc.
6. One of the circular markings of certain diatoms.
7. The bubble or mass of bubbles rising to the top or resting on the surface of a liquid when shaken or decanted: as, the bead of wines or spirits.
8. A glass globule for trying the strength of alcoholic spirits. Beads are numbered according to their specific gravities, and the strength of the spirit is denominated by the number of that one which remains suspended in it, and neither sinks to the bottom nor floats on the surface. Beads, in determining the strength of spirits, are now for the most part superseded by the hydrometer.
9. In mineralogy, in the blowpipe examination of minerals, a globule of borax or other flux which is supported on a platinum wire, and in which the substance under examination is dissolved in the blowpipe flame.
10. In arch. and joinery, a small convex molding, in section a semicircle or greater than a semicircle; properly, a plain molding, but often synonymous with astragal, which is better reserved for a small convex molding cut into the form of a string of beads. The bead is a very frequent ornament, used to mark a junction or a separation, as between the shaft and the capital of a column, to dress an angle, etc. It is much used in woodwork of all kinds, from carpenters' work to the finest kinds of joinery and cabinet-work. Among joiners the bead is variously introduced; as: bead and butt (fig. 1), framed work in which the panel is flush with the framing and has a bead run on two edges in the direction of the grain only, while the ends are left plain;
11. In bookbinding, shoemaking, etc., any cord-like prominence, as the roll on the head-band of a book, the seam of a shoe, etc.
12. that is, “set of beads” (), a rosary; now, specifically, a chaplet of five decades, that is, a third part of the rosary. A chaplet or pair of beads, as thus restricted, is the form in common use under the name of the beads. The large beads between the decades were formerly called gaudies (see gaud, gaudy); each separate bead, or grain, as it is now termed, Tyndale calls a stone.
13. literally, to offer (one's) prayers; hence the later equivalent phrases to say or recite (one's) beads, now with reference, as literally in the phrase to tell (one's) beads, to counting off prayers by means of the beads on the rosary. The phrases to count and to number (one's) beads are merely literary.

Wiktionary

1. Prayer, later especially with a rosary. [from 9th c.]
2. Each in a string of small balls making up the rosary or paternoster. [from 14th c.]
3. A small round object
4. A small round object with a hole to allow it to be threaded on a cord or wire. [from 15th c.]
5. A small drop of water or other liquid. [from 16th c.]
6. beads of sweat
7. A small round ball at the end of a barrel of a gun used for aiming.
8. She drew a bead on the target and fired.
9. A ridge, band, or molding.
10. A rigid edge of a tire that mounts it on a wheel; tire bead. [from 20th c.]
11. A knowledge sufficient to direct one's activities to a purpose.

1. A prayer.
2. A little perforated ball, to be strung on a thread, and worn for ornament; or used in a rosary for counting prayers, as by Roman Catholics and Mohammedans, whence the phrases to tell beads, to be at one's beads, to bid beads, etc., meaning, to be at prayer.
3. Any small globular body.
4. A bubble in spirits.
5. A drop of sweat or other liquid.
6. A small knob of metal on a firearm, used for taking aim (whence the expression to draw a bead, for, to take aim).
7. A small molding of rounded surface, the section being usually an arc of a circle. It may be continuous, or broken into short embossments.
8. A glassy drop of molten flux, as borax or microcosmic salt, used as a solvent and color test for several mineral earths and oxides, as of iron, manganese, etc., before the blowpipe

WordNet 3.0

1. a shape that is spherical and small
2. a beaded molding for edging or decorating furniture
3. a small ball with a hole through the middle