BEADLE • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Beadle

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/bˈidəl/ Listen

noun

Beadle n.

A messenger or crier of a court; a servitor; one who cites or bids persons to appear and answer; called also an apparitor or summoner.

An officer in a university, who precedes public processions of officers and students. (Eng.) Note: In this sense the archaic spellings bedel (Oxford) and bedell (Cambridge) are preserved.

An inferior parish officer in England having a variety of duties, as the preservation of order in church service, the chastisement of petty offenders, etc.

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Etymology of 'Beadle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Beadle" Quotes from Famous Books

... any surrender made before the reeve or beadle, with two customary tenants of the said manor, or before any two customary tenants of the said manor without the reeve or beadle, no herriot is due to the lord of the said manor, if the estate thereby made and surrendered be from ...

— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge

... you, when you are left to yourselves, without your rectors—myself, and Hall, and Boultby—to back you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see Malone.—I have an errand ...

— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... A beadle in violet sleeves, a sort of priest, took me in charge and conducted me all over the church. The stones were dark, the statues dismal, the altar mysterious. No lamps competed with the sun. The latter threw upon the sepulchral stones in the pavement the long white silhouettes of the windows, ...

— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... the jail being flung open from within, there appeared, in the first place, the grim presence of the town-beadle, and following him a young woman who bore in her arms a baby ...

— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... brief eulogy upon the honour and responsibility of that position, pointing out that the beadle had a dignity all his own, as well as the elders and other officers ...

— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles

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