beadle

• bedel, bedell (obsolete)

From Middle English bedel, bidel, from Old English bydel (“warrant officer, apparitor”), from Proto-Germanic *budilaz (“herald”), from Proto-Germanic *beudaną (“to present, offer”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewdʰ- (“to comprehend, make aware”). Akin to Swedish bödel, Finnish pyöveli, and Old High German butil (“beadle”), (whence German Büttel), Old English bēodan (“to announce”). More at bid.

• (UK) IPA^(key): [ˈbiːdəɫ]
• Rhymes: -iːdəl

beadle (plural beadles)

1. a parish constable, a uniformed minor (lay) official, who ushers and keeps order
2. (Scotland, ecclesiastic) an attendant to the minister
3. a warrant officer

• 1789, William Blake, "Holy Thursday"

Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,

The children walking two and two in red and blue and green:

Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,

Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow. - William Blake, "Holy Thursday" (1789)

• 1929, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, Penguin Books, paperback edition, page 8

  His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman.

• beadledom
• beadleism
• beadlery
• beadleship

• bedeal, belead