beaver

name

Etymology: Calque of Canadian French Castor. From French castor (“beaver”).

1. The Dane-zaa people, indigenous to northern Alberta and British Columbia, Canada.

noun

1. Alternative letter-case form of beaver (“beard-spotting game”).

verb

Etymology: From Middle English bever, from Old English befer, from Proto-West Germanic *bebru, from Proto-Germanic *bebruz, from Proto-Indo-European *bʰébʰrus (“beaver”). Cognate with West Frisian bever, Dutch bever, French bièvre, German Biber, dialectal Swedish bjur. Non-Germanic cognates include Welsh befer, Latin fiber, Lithuanian bẽbras, Russian бобр (bobr), Avestan 𐬠𐬀𐬎𐬎𐬭𐬀 (bauura), and Sanskrit बभ्रु (bábhru, “mongoose; ichneumon”). Slang use to refer to a woman evolved from use to refer to pubic hair, which evolved from use to refer to beards, which evolved from use to refer to the furry animal or its fur.

1. 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.”

2. 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.”

3. To cut a continuous ring around a tree that one is felling.
4. After being doubled, to immediately double the stakes again, a move that keeps the doubling cube on one’s own side of the board.
5. 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.”