English

Noun

beazle ‎(plural beazles)

1. (rare) A bezel (collet of a ring, the rim which encloses the jewel and into which the jewel is set).
   • 1810, The Primitives of the Greek Tongue, a translation of a French work by T. Nugent; a gloss of a Greek word on page 187:

     The beazle or collet of a ring, that which contains the apple of the eye, a kind of ornament of women.

   • 1825, Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, Encyclopaedia of Antiquities: and elements of Archaeology, volume 1, page 212:

     The figures upon seals were as various as among us, except that the ancients used figures of their ancestors, friends, or even themselves. In Stosch is a symbolical ring, supported by two cornucopias. Upon the beazle is a mask in relief, and in the circle of the ring a crescent and star.

   • 1847, G. S. Bedford, translator of A Practical Treatise on Midwifery, by Nicolas Charles Chailly-Honoré, page 470:

     Now let us suppose that the placenta is inserted on one of these muscles, which is not at all uncommon, and that the circular fibres, the most remote from the orifice of the tube, should contract spasmodically, the after-birth will be enclosed in this species of cavity, as a stone in the beazle of a ring (dans le chaton d'une bague).

   • 1889, A group of Eastern Romances and Stories, from the Persian, Tamil, and Urdu, translated by W. A. Clouston; The Three Deceitful Women, page 355:

     ONCE on a time there were three whales of the sea of fraud and deceit — three dragons of the nature of thunder and the quickness of lightning — three defamers of honor and reputation — in other words, three men-deceiving, lascivious women [...]. One of them was sitting in the court of justice of the Kází's embraces; the second was the precious gem of the bazár-master's diadem of compliance; and the third was the beazle and ornament of the signet-ring of the life and soul of the superintendent of police. They were constantly entrapping the fawns of the prairie of deceit, [...]

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For usage examples of this term, see Citations:beazle.