Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Ten decibels.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Same as Belus.
  • Fair; fine; beautiful.
  • [Lit. fair, good, as in beausire, fair sir, beaupere, good father, used in F. and ME. to indicate indirect or adopted secondary relationship; so in mod. F. beau- as a formative in relation-names, ‘step-’, ‘-in-law’; ME. bel-, ‘grand-’, as in beldame, grandmother, belsire, grandfather, also with purely E. names, belmoder, belfader, and later belchild. Cf. Sc. and North. E. goodmother, goodfather, etc., mother-in-law, father-in-law, etc.] Grand-: a formative in relation-names, as belsire, grandfather, beldam, grandmother, etc. See etymology.
  • noun The East Indian name of the Bengal quince-tree, Ægle Marmelos. See Ægle, 1.
  • noun A simplified spelling of bell.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The Babylonian name of the god known among the Hebrews as Baal. See Baal.
  • noun A thorny rutaceous tree (Ægle marmelos) of India, and its aromatic, orange-like fruit; -- called also Bengal quince, golden apple, wood apple. The fruit is used medicinally, and the rind yields a perfume and a yellow dye.
  • noun a unit of sound intensity equal to ten decibels.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A measure of relative power, defined as log10(P 1/P 2), where P1 and P2 are the measured and reference power respectively. See also decibel.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun Babylonian god of the earth; one of the supreme triad including Anu and Ea; earlier identified with En-lil
  • noun a logarithmic unit of sound intensity equal to 10 decibels

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[After Alexander Graham Bell.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Named after Alexander G. Bell

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  • "2. beldame, grandmother, belsire, grandfather, also with purely E. names, belmoder, belfader, and later belchild. Cf. Sc. and North. E. goodmother, goodfather, etc., mother-in-law, father-in-law, etc.'>Lit. fair, good, as in beausire, fair sir, beaupere, good father, used in F. and ME. to indicate indirect or adopted secondary relationship; so in mod. F. beau- as a formative in relation-names, ‘step-’, ‘-in-law’; ME. bel-, ‘grand-’, as in beldame, grandmother, belsire, grandfather, also with purely E. names, belmoder, belfader, and later belchild. Cf. Sc. and North. E. goodmother, goodfather, etc., mother-in-law, father-in-law, etc. Grand-: a formative in relation-names, as belsire, grandfather, beldam, grandmother, etc."

    --Century Dictionary

    March 25, 2011