Word Confusion: Beadle vs Beatle vs Beetle vs Betel

Plural: beadles

Alternative spelling: bedel

Plural: the Beatles

Plural for the noun: beetles
Gerund: beetling

Third person present verb: beetles
Past tense or past participle: beetled
Present participle: beetling

Plural: betels

• [Scottish] A church officer assisting the minister
• [Historical] A minor parish officer having various subordinate duties, as keeping order during services, waiting on the rector, dealing with petty offenders, etc.

[Judaism] An official who maintains a synagogue and its religious articles, chants the designated portion of the Torah on prescribed days, and assists the cantor in conducting services on festivals

• [As modifier Beatle] Characteristic of the Beatles

• Overhanging

Noun:
An insect of an order distinguished by forewings typically modified into hard wing cases (elytra) that cover and protect the hind wings and abdomen ²

[British; mass noun] A dice game in which a picture of a beetle is drawn or assembled

A tool with a heavy head and a handle, used for tasks such as ramming, crushing, and driving wedges ³

• A maul
• A machine used for heightening the luster of cloth by pressure from rollers

Proper noun:
A two-door, rear-engine economy car, intended for five occupants that was manufactured and marketed by German automaker Volkswagen (VW) from 1938 until 2003 ⁴

Verb, intransitive:
To project ¹

• Jut out
• Overhang

To hang or tower over in a threatening or menacing manner

[Informal; with adverbial of direction] Make one’s way hurriedly or with short, quick steps ²

Verb, transitive:
Ram, crush, or drive with a maul-like tool ³

• Finish (cloth) with a beetle

• An Asian piperaceous climbing plant, the leaves of which are chewed, with the betel nut, by the peoples of SE Asia

Meanwhile in Scotland, the old beadle died and his son succeeded him, eking out a modest living by selling tea and tobacco.

Also, they ordain that there be two beadles in the borough, sworn to make all attachments and distraints, and carry out all orders from bailiffs, coroners, and capital portmen which ought to be done in the borough.

Moishe the Beadle, the caretaker of a synagogue in Sighet in the 1940s, is an important character in Night by Elie Wiesel.

Is it possible for any person to whittle down to just one favorite song by the Beatles?

Paul McCartney of the Beatles lived just down the road from my father-in-law.

When she was younger, she absolutely had to have Beatle boots.

But every Mersey cadence as enunciated by George was music, Beatle music, to American ears.

For decades, John has been groaning about the outdated Beatle haircuts worn by aging Baby Boomers.

Beneath the beetle brow and the thinning combover, however, lurked a singular songwriting talent.

He turned towards her; his eyes flashing under his beetling eyebrows.

Noun:
Coleoptera is an order of insects that includes beetles.

Weevils are considered beetles.

A variety of insects, including some beetles and moths, mimic bees and wasps.

It turns out that only some male horned scarab beetles grow long horns and battle for mates.

In the old days, we used to meet weekly and ran bingo and beetle drives to raise money.

Champ was prepared especially for the festival of Hallowe’en when large quantities of potatoes were pounded with a cylindrical wooden implement called a beetle.

It worked perfectly — intensity of light was controlled by pressure on the beetle!

Proper noun:
My first car was a 1966 mint green Beetle.

A friend bought herself a more modern Beetle in a soft yellow.

It was amazing what a family could fit into a Volkswagen Beetle.

Verb, intransitive:
He glared forbiddingly, his eyebrows beetling together like two fuzzy caterpillars were mating on his forehead.

His eyebrows beetled, and he slipped into a deep sleep, with the music of Total Package playing in his ears.

His thick eyebrows beetling over blue eyes gave me the creeps.

The prospect of bankruptcy beetled over him.

The tourist beetled off.

He beetled off to catch the train.

And off he beetled to the back room he set up a couple of days ago, with a clean workbench and a worklight just right for the assembly of electronic components.

Verb, transitive:
She stood in a shed, beetling grain for the fowl.

From sowing to pulling, retting to rippling, spinning to weaving, beetling to bleaching, a long, exhausting and sometimes dangerous business made a cloth so precious it was put under armed guard and cost thieves their lives.

Areca nuts, derived from the areca palm, are also referred to as betel nuts and are considered an aphrodisiac.

Betel, Piper betle, is a member of the family Piperaceae from which the leaves are taken.

These offerings include a goat, two cups and one box of cooked rice, a tray of ground rice cakes, five cups of sticky rice, lemon juice, and ten pieces of betel.

In irrigated conditions, it can choose from sugarcane, maize, brinjal, chillies, mulberry, tomato, potato, turmeric, ginger, grapes, banana, and betel.

Another way to round off a meal is to chew paan, which is the broad leaf of the betel plant sprinkled with a lime powder and kaat and can be mildly euphoric.

1. 1325–75, Middle English in a back formation from beetle-browed.
2. Old English bitula, bitela meaning biter, is from the base of bītan meaning to bite.
3. Old English bētel is of Germanic origin.
4. Somewhere around 1945, the Volkswagen was nicknamed the Beetle, amongst other nicknames.