BECK

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does beck mean? 

• BECK (noun)
  The noun BECK has 1 sense:

1. a beckoning gesture

  Familiarity information: BECK used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• BECK (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A beckoning gesture

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("beck" is a kind of...):

gesture; motion (the use of movements (especially of the hands) to communicate familiar or prearranged signals)

 Context examples 

“By St. Thomas of Kent! we are at the beck of our master, but we are not to be ordered by every babe whose mother hath sent him as far as Aquitaine.”

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, that showed only ranks of skeletons.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!—when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down ing and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Let us rest here, said St. John, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem—where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning—where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)