▪ I. beehive
(ˈbiːˌhaɪv)
[f. bee n.1 + -hive n.]
1. a. A receptacle used as a home for bees; usually made of thick straw work in the shape of a dome; but there are modern contrivances made of many materials, and adapted to special purposes.
| c 1325 Coer de L. 2885 And commaunded hys men, belyve To bryng up many a bee-hyve. 1483 Cath. Angl. 26 Be⁓hyve, apiarium. 1593 Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iv. i. 109 Drones sucke not Eagles blood, but rob Bee-hiues. 1855 Macaulay Hist. Eng. III. 611 The farmhouse peeping from among beehives and apple-blossoms. |
b. fig. A place swarming with busy people; a ‘hive of industry’. (
Cf.hive n.3.)
| 1616 R. Carpenter Larum Love 33 A profitable and behoouefull member in the Bee-hiue of Christs Church. 1725 New-Eng. Courant 8 Mar. 1 If we could..make that Building a Bee-Hive of Business. 1940 Manch. Guardian Weekly 15 Mar. 216 He works in a great hospital now, a beehive of a place—swarming with people. 1949 Koestler Promise & Fulf. iii. iv. 324 The bustling bee-hive activity of the whole country. |
c. A hat shaped like a beehive.
Cf. beehive-hat below (sense 3).
| 1909 Westm. Gaz. 2 Mar. 5/2 A useful hat..is one of the new shape, which some milliners are calling the ‘Beehive’. 1937 N. Coward Present Indic. i. xix. 66 Gertie Millar in Our Miss Gibbs, wearing a beehive. |
d. A high beehive-shaped hair-style.
| 1960 Guardian 22 July 7/2 Three East Berlin peroxide girls whose beehives tower over provocative curves. Ibid. 26 Aug. 6/4 Exaggerated beehive hair-styles. 1962 New Statesman 18 May 708/2 Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultry round the packed pub. |
2. Name of a nebula in the constellation Cancer.
| 1869 Dunkin Midn. Sky 136 A small nebulous-looking object in the crab's body, is known by the name of the Præsepe, or the Beehive. |
3. Comb. and
attrib., chiefly in sense of ‘shaped like a bee-hive,’ as in
beehive-basket,
beehive-chair (
i.e. with a top like a bee-hive),
beehive-hat,
beehive-hut,
beehive-oven; also
beehive-like,
beehive-shaped,
adjs. beehive coke, coke produced in a beehive oven;
beehive tomb, a dome-shaped tomb of the Mycenæan age in Greece, cut in a hillside.
| 1816 Southey Essays (1832) I. 181 His place in the chimney-corner, or the *bee-hive chair. |
| 1909 Webster, *Beehive coke. 1914 J. S. S. Brame Fuel vi. 97 It is found that the lower portions of beehive coke are more dense than the upper. |
| 1909 Daily Chron. 22 Feb. 7/5 The latest *beehive hat. 1961 Guardian 19 Jan. 9/7 Worn with a..beehive hat. |
| 1863 Lubbock Preh. Times ii. (1878) 56 From these we pass naturally to the *beehive houses. |
| 1884 J. Colborne Hicks Pasha 84 The..*beehive huts of the narrow street. |
| 1881 Raymond Mining Gloss., *Beehive oven, an oven for the manufacture of coke, shaped like the old-fashioned beehive. |
| 1858 W. Ellis Vis. Madagascar ix. 235 Low, *beehive-shaped huts. |
| 1887 Mahaffy Rambles Greece xv. (ed. 3) 417 A race..who constructed great *beehive tombs. 1957 Childe Dawn Europ. Civ. (ed. 6) v. 80 These [sc. chieftains] celebrated their elevation by erecting stately beehive tombs or tholoi. |
▪ II. ˈbeehive, v. rare.
[f. prec.] intr. To cluster like bees in a hive. (
U.S.A.)
| 1883 N.E. Jrnl. Educ. XVII. 325 The girls bee-hive together to discuss mysteries. |