different between beaver vs something

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?bi?v?/
• (General American) enPR: b??v?r, IPA^(key): /?biv?/
• Rhymes: -i?v?(?)
• Homophones: Belvoir, bever, bevor

Etymology 1

From Middle English bever, from Old English beofor (“beaver”), from Proto-Germanic *bebruz (“beaver”) (compare West Frisian bever, Dutch bever, French bièvre, German Biber, dialectal Swedish bjur), from Proto-Indo-European *b?éb?rus (“beaver”) (compare Welsh befer, Latin fiber, Lithuanian b?bras, Russian ???? (bobr), Avestan ????????????????????????? (bauura), ????????????????????????? (bauuri), Sanskrit ????? (bábhru, “mongoose; ichneumon”)), from Proto-Indo-European *b?erH- (“brown”). Related to brown and bear.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers or beaver)

1. A semiaquatic rodent of the genus Castor, having a wide, flat tail and webbed feet.
2. A hat, of various shapes, made from a felted beaver fur (or later of silk), fashionable in Europe between 1550 and 1850.
   • 1856-1858, William H. Prescott, History of the Reign of Philip II

     a broad beaver slouched over his eyes

   • 1896: For the White Rose of Arno by Owen Rhoscomyl

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

3. (vulgar, slang) The pubic hair and/or vulva of a woman.
   • 2010 Dennis McFadden, Hart's Grove: Stories

     […] once she wore none at all, swears to this day that he saw her beaver that fateful Friday night.

4. The fur of the beaver.
5. Beaver cloth, a heavy felted woollen cloth, used chiefly for making overcoats.
6. A brown colour, like that of a beaver (also called beaver brown).

7. (slang) A man who wears a beard.
   • 1936 P.G. Wodehouse, Laughing Gas:

     The beards were false ones. I could see the elastic going over their ears. In other words, I had fallen among a band of criminals who were not wilful beavers, but had merely assumed the fungus for purposes of disguise.

Synonyms

• (hat): castor, castoreum (archaic)
• (fur): castorette
• (cloth): castor

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• Appendix:Animals

Etymology 2

See bevor.

Noun

beaver (plural beavers)

1. Alternative spelling of bevor (“part of a helmet”)
   • c. 1590, William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 3, Act I, Scene 1,^[1]

     Lord Stafford’s father, Duke of Buckingham,

     Is either slain or wounded dangerously;

     I cleft his beaver with a downright blow:

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

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

   • 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.

     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.

   • 1974, Lawrence Durrell, Monsieur, or the Prince of Darkness, Faber & Faber 1992, p.128:

     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!

Further reading

• beaver on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Castor on Wikispecies.Wikispecies
• beaver on Wikimedia Commons.Wikimedia Commons
• The Manual of Heraldry, Fifth Edition, by Anonymous, London, 1862, online at [2]

References

English

Alternative forms

• somthing (obsolete)
• sumn (eye dialect, AAVE)

Etymology

From Middle English somthing, some-thing, som thing, sum thinge, sum þinge, from Old English sum þing (literally “some thing”), equivalent to some +? thing. Compare Old English ?wiht (“something”, literally “some thing, any thing”), Swedish någonting (“something”, literally “some thing, any thing”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?s?m???/, [?s?m???]
• (US) IPA^(key): /?s?m???/, [?s?n????], (sometimes reduced to [?s?(m)?m?] or [?s?????], or even monosyllabically to [s???] or [s???])
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /?sam???/, [?säm???]
• Hyphenation: some?thing

Pronoun

something (indefinite pronoun)

1. An uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing.

   Synonym: (especially in dictionaries) sth
2. (colloquial, of someone or something) A quality to a moderate degree.
3. (colloquial, of a person) A talent or quality that is difficult to specify.

   Synonym: je ne sais quoi

4. (colloquial, often with really or quite) Somebody who or something that is superlative or notable in some way.

Derived terms

• somethingth
• up to something

Related terms

Descendants

• Tok Pisin: samting
• ? Korean: ?? (sseomting)

Translations

Adjective

something (not comparable)

1. Having a characteristic that the speaker cannot specify.

Adverb

something (not comparable)

1. (degree) Somewhat; to a degree.

2. (degree, colloquial) To a high degree.

Derived terms

Verb

something (third-person singular simple present somethings, present participle somethinging, simple past and past participle somethinged)

1. Applied to an action whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g. from words of a song.
   • 1890, William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes [2]

     He didn’t apply for it for a long time, and then there was a hitch about it, and it was somethinged—vetoed, I believe she said.

   • 2003, George Angel, “Allegoady,” in Juncture, Lara Stapleton and Veronica Gonzalez edd. [3]

     She hovers over the something somethinging and awkwardly lowers her bulk.

   • 2005, Floyd Skloot, A World of Light [4]

     “Oh how we somethinged on the hmmm hmm we were wed. Dear, was I ever on the stage?”

Noun

something (plural somethings)

1. An object whose nature is yet to be defined.
2. An object whose name is forgotten by, unknown or unimportant to the user, e.g., from words of a song. Also used to refer to an object earlier indefinitely referred to as 'something' (pronoun sense).
   • 1999, Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar [5]

     What was the something the pilot saw, the something worth killing for?

   • 2004, Theron Q Dumont, The Master Mind [6]

     Moreover, in all of our experience with these sense impressions, we never lose sight of the fact that they are but incidental facts of our mental existence, and that there is a Something Within which is really the Subject of these sense reports—a Something to which these reports are presented, and which receives them.

   • 2004, Ira Levin, The Stepford Wives [7]

     She wiped something with a cloth, wiped at the wall shelf, and put the something on it, clinking glass.