Definition of "beaver"

Then, for the safeguard of his personage,He did appoint a warlike equipageOf foreign beasts, not in the forest bred,But part by land and part by water fed;For tyranny is with strange aid supported.Then unto him all monstrous beasts resortedBred of two kinds, as Griffons, Minotaurs,Crocodiles, Dragons, Beavers, and Centaurs:With those himself he strengthened mightily,That fear he need no force of enemy.

1591, Edmund Spenser, “Prosopopoia; or, Mother Hubberd’s Tale”, in Edmund Spenser, edited by Charles Cowden Clarke, The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser‎, Edinburgh: William P. Nimmo, published 1868, page 112, lines 1117–1126

a broad beaver slouched over his eyes

1855–1858, William H[ickling] Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip the Second, King of Spain, volumes (please specify |volume=I to III), Boston, Mass.: Phillips, Sampson, and Company

The woman's hair and woman's beaver had both been jerked off, exposing the cropped head of a man...

1896, Owen Rhoscomyl, For the White Rose of Arno

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.

2017, Felicity Heal, “Changing Interpretations of the British Reformations”, in Ulinka Rublack, editor, The Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 234

Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,Is either slain or wounded dangerously;I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:

c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene i]

With trembling hands her beaver he untied, / Which done, he saw, and seeing knew her face.

1600, Edward Fairfax, The Jerusalem Delivered of Tasso, XII, lxvii

Without alighting from his horse, the conqueror called for a bowl of wine, and opening the beaver, or lower part of his helmet, announced that he quaffed it, “To all true English hearts, and to the confusion of foreign tyrants.”

1819, Walter Scott, Ivanhoe

They laid a table for him at the door of the inn for the sake of the air, and the host brought him a portion of ill-soaked and worse cooked stockfish, and a piece of bread as black and mouldy as his own armour; but a laughble sight it was to see him eating, for having his helmet on and the beaver up, he could not with his own hands put anything into his mouth unless some one else placed it there, and this service one of the ladies rendered him.

1951 Adaptation of the 1885 Ormsby translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, correcting Ormsby as to the portion of the helmet referred to by Cervantes (see note 11 to chapter II) at the suggestion of Juan Hartzenbusch, a 19th-century director of the National Library of Spain.

As each one brings a little of himself to what he sees you brought the trappings of your historic preoccupations, so that Monsieur flattered you by presenting himself with beaver up like Hamlet's father's ghost!

1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness, Faber & Faber, published 1992, page 128

Butter – Beaver.]

[1754, The Scoundrel’s Dictionary, London, page 15

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.

1799, Arthur Young, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lincoln, London, page 155

Beavering of foreign visitors does not count. This is a rule, but it is never carried out.

1922 October 13, Roanoke World-News‎, Roanoke, Virginia, retrieved December 2, 2022, page 6