noun
A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet, native to the Northern Hemisphere.
Then, for the safeguard of his personage, He did appoint a warlike equipage Of foreign beasts, not in the forest bred, But part by land and part by water fed; For tyranny is with strange aid supported. Then unto him all monstrous beasts resorted Bred of two kinds, as Griffons, Minotaurs, Crocodiles, Dragons, Beavers, and Centaurs: With those himself he strengthened mightily, That fear he need no force of enemy.
The fur of the beaver.
A hat, of various shapes, made from a felted beaver fur (or later of silk), fashionable in Europe between 1550 and 1850.
a broad beaver slouched over his eyes
The woman's hair and woman's beaver had both been jerked off, exposing the cropped head of a man...
Beaver pelts as an article of exchange or as a standard of value.
Beaver cloth, a heavy felted woollen cloth, used chiefly for making overcoats.
verb
To form a felt-like texture, similar to the way beaver fur is used for felt-making.
Without these attentions the woad will not beaver well, a term descriptive of the fineness of the capillary filaments into which it draws out when broken between the finger and thumb.
To work hard.
When A. G. Dickens published his English Reformation in 1964 the archival beavering of a generation of graduate students was given its imprimatur in the claim to understand how the English people felt about religious change—largely, according to Dickens, positively.
To cut a continuous ring around a tree that one is felling.
After being doubled, to immediately double the stakes again, a move that keeps the doubling cube on one’s own side of the board.
To spot a beard in a game of beaver.
Beavering of foreign visitors does not count. This is a rule, but it is never carried out.
noun
Alternative spelling of bevor (“part of a helmet”).
Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham, Is either slain or wounded dangerously; I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:
With trembling hands her beaver he untied, / Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face.