beadle
noun/ˈbiːdəl/ · [ˈbɪi̯dəl] ~ [ˈbɪi̯dl̩]
Etymology From Middle English bedel, bidel, from Old English bydel (“warrant officer, apparitor”), from Proto-West Germanic *budil, from Proto-Germanic *budilaz (“herald”), equivalent to bid + -le. Cognate with Dutch beul, German Büttel. More at bid.
1
A parish constable, a uniformed minor (lay) official, who ushers and keeps order.
- 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.1789, William Blake, “Holy Thursday”, in Songs of Innocence:
- The beadle […] generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution […] The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that must be borne with until government shall abolish him.1852 March – 1853 September, Charles Dickens, chapter 11, in Bleak House, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1853, →OCLC, page 101:
2 more examples
- Yes, yes, begad—of course you go out with him—it’s like the country, you know; everybody goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are beadles, you know, and that sort of thing—everybody walks in the Temple Gardens.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 54, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published 1850, →OCLC, page 142:
- His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman.1929 September, Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, uniform edition, London: Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, […], published 1931 (April 1935 printing), →OCLC, page 9:
2
Ecclesiastical, Lifestyle, Religion Scotland An attendant to the minister.
3
A warrant officer.
- Derived terms
- beadledom, beadlehood, beadleism, beadlery, beadleship, beagle, subbeadle, underbeadle