bean
- noun
- /biːn/
- Slang
- After that incident, he kept rubbing his bean as if it would make the pain go away.
No, I just think it's too soon for my mind, my little bean mind process.
- No, I just think it's too soon for my mind, my little bean mind process.
Examples
-
Hey, why don't you just back off, string bean?
-
Was he concerned that I'd been spilling the beans to the police?
Fiction book (1995) -
1776, wasn't it, old bean?
-
Have fun, old bean.
-
So long, old bean.
-
Cool beans.
-
But they're about to close the betting - and I haven't a bean.
-
Everyone realizes that I don't know beans about electronics, and neither does Joanna.
Fiction book (1996) -
He bumped his head, and now he's complaining about his bean.
-
Don't worry about your bean; it's just a little scratch.
Synonyms
The rounded top part of something, like a bone or tool
A playful word for a person's head
A person's head in informal speech
A person's head
The top part of a person's body that people mean as a joke or in informal talk
A person's head, used informally in British English
Compounds
- Offensive
A person who pays too much attention to small money details and misses the big picture
A large red seed shaped like a kidney that people cook and eat or the plant that grows it
- US
A climbing plant with purple flowers and long hairy pods used to improve soil and feed animals
- Archaic
A woody climbing plant with purple flowers and hairy pods that farmers grow to feed animals and improve soil
A shrub with leaves in three parts, yellow flowers, and curving seed pods that smells bad when crushed
- Specialized
A group of small trees, shrubs, and herbs that grow in hot, dry, salty places and are sometimes poisonous
A bush that grows small flat beans you can eat, often served as a vegetable
- UK
A dark brown seed from a West African plant that is poisonous and used in traditional medicine and rituals
A tropical African climbing plant that makes beans used in medicine and once used as a poison
An evergreen tree that grows in Mediterranean countries and makes sweet pods eaten like chocolate
A large tropical shrub with big hand-shaped leaves and spiny seed pods that give seeds used to make castor oil
- US
A shrub or small tree with divided leaves, blue flower spikes and red seeds, some poisonous to farm animals
A tropical bean plant with red flowers that grows black beans with white spots you can eat
- Indian
A climbing plant with purple flowers and dark red pods that have edible seeds and are used as a vegetable
A small reddish-brown bean used in Chinese and Japanese cooking, often in sweet dishes
A small red-brown bean from East Asia often used in Japanese and Chinese sweets and flour
- Specialized
A long pod with sweet pulp and small beans people and animals eat, often used like chocolate
A plant from Europe that produces large flat seeds eaten by people and fed to animals
Surface Forms
Etymology
Bean used as a slang word for 'head' likely began as a simple picture: a head seen as a small round seed, so people started calling the head a 'bean'; a helpful way to remember this is that 'use your bean' means 'use your head'.