beck - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English bek, bekk, becc, from Old English bæc, bec, bæċe, beċe (“beck, brook”), from Proto-Germanic *bakiz (“stream”).

Cognate with Old Norse bekkr (“a stream or brook”), Low German bek, beck, German Bach, Dutch beek, Swedish bäck, Doublet of batch. More at beach.

beck (plural becks)

  1. (Norfolk, Northern England) A stream or small river.
    • 1612, Michael Drayton, chapter 1, in [John Selden], editor, Poly-Olbion. Or A Chorographicall Description of Tracts, Riuers, Mountaines, Forests, and Other Parts of this Renowned Isle of Great Britaine, […], London: […] [Humphrey Lownes] for M[athew] Lownes; I[ohn] Browne; I[ohn] Helme; I[ohn] Busbie, →OCLC, page 3:
      […] Whence, climing to the Cleeves, her selfe she firmlie sets / The Bourns, the Brooks, the Becks, the Rills, the Rivilets […]
    • 1908, Collections for a History of Staffordshire, page 107:
      This is the boundary at Earnleie: First from Earesbrook and [qu. to] the short thorns, […] and from the tree to Tudelesbeck, along the beck to the Severn, up along the Severn to Leofric's boundary, […]
    • 1976, Archie Fisher, “The Witch Of The West-Mer-Lands”, in The Man With A Rhyme, Sharon, CT: Folk Legacy Records:
      Beck water cold and clear, will never clean your wound
    • 1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 102:
      The beck is crossed by a pretty ford and a number of bridges, and in spring the cottages look out over a dancing sea of daffodils.

stream

From Middle English bekken, a shortened form of Middle English bekenen, from Old English bēcnan, bēacnian (“to signify; beckon”), from Proto-West Germanic *baukn, from Proto-Germanic *baukną (“beacon”). More at beacon.

beck (plural becks)

  1. A significant nod, or motion of the head or hand, especially as a call or command.

significant nod, or motion of the head or hand, especially as a call or command

beck (third-person singular simple present becks, present participle becking, simple past and past participle becked)

  1. (archaic) To nod or motion with the head.
    • c. 1596 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Iohn”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii]:
      When gold and silver becks me to come on.
    • 1896, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr, Winter Evening Tales‎[1]:
      I'll buy so many acres of old Scotland and call them by the Lockerby's name; and I'll have nobles and great men come bowing and becking to David Lockerby as they do to Alexander Gordon.
    • 1881, Various, The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III‎[2]:
      The becking waiter, that with wreathed smiles, wont to spread for Samuel and Bozzy their "supper of the gods," has long since pocketed his last sixpence; and vanished, sixpence and all, like a ghost at cock-crowing.

See back.

beck (plural becks)

  1. A vat.

From Middle English bec, bek, from Old French bec (“beak”).

beck (plural becks)

  1. Obsolete form of beak.

beck m (plural becks)

  1. alternative spelling of beque

From Old Norse bik, from Middle Low German pik, from Old Saxon pik, from Proto-West Germanic *pik, from Latin pix. See also Dutch pek, German Pech.

beck n

  1. pitch (a dark, extremely viscous material still remaining after distilling crude oil and tar)