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1570s, “to adorn with beads,” from bead (n.). Meaning “to string like beads” is from 1819. Intransitive sense “form in beads” is from 1873. Related: Beaded; beading.

mid-14c., bede “prayer bead,” from Old English gebed “prayer,” with intensive or collective prefix *ge- + Proto-Germanic *bidam “entreaty” (source also of Middle Dutch bede, Old High German beta, German bitte, Gothic bida “prayer, request”), from PIE *bhedh- “to ask, pray,” perhaps from a root meaning “to press, urge,” hence “to pray.”

Shift in meaning came via rosary beads threaded on a string to count prayers, and in verbal phrases bid one’s beads, count one’s beads, etc. German cognate Bitte is the usual word for conversational request “please.” Compare Spanish cuentas “the beads of a rosary,” from contar “to count.”

The word is also related to bid (Old English biddan) and Gothic bidjan “to ask, pray.” Sense in Modern English was transferred to other small globular bodies, such as “drop of liquid” (1590s), “small knob forming front sight of a gun” (1831, Kentucky slang); hence draw a bead on “take aim at,” 1841, U.S. colloquial.

late 14c., ethimolegia “facts of the origin and development of a word,” from Old French etimologie, ethimologie (14c., Modern French étymologie), from Latin etymologia, from Greek etymologia “analysis of a word to find its true origin,” properly “study of the true sense (of a word),” with -logia “study of, a speaking of” (see -logy) + etymon “true sense, original meaning,” neuter of etymos “true, real, actual,” related to eteos “true,” which perhaps is cognate with Sanskrit satyah, Gothic sunjis, Old English soð “true,” from a PIE *set- “be stable.” Latinized by Cicero as veriloquium.

In classical times, with reference to meanings; later, to histories. Classical etymologists, Christian and pagan, based their explanations on allegory and guesswork, lacking historical records as well as the scientific method to analyze them, and the discipline fell into disrepute that lasted a millennium. Flaubert [“Dictionary of Received Ideas”] wrote that the general view was that etymology was “the easiest thing in the world with the help of Latin and a little ingenuity.”

As a modern branch of linguistic science treating of the origin and evolution of words, from 1640s. As “an account of the particular history of a word” from mid-15c. Related: Etymological; etymologically.

As practised by Socrates in the Cratylus, etymology involves a claim about the underlying semantic content of the name, what it really means or indicates. This content is taken to have been put there by the ancient namegivers: giving an etymology is thus a matter of unwrapping or decoding a name to find the message the namegivers have placed inside. [Rachel Barney, “Socrates Agonistes: The Case of the Cratylus Etymologies,” in “Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy,” vol. xvi, 1998]