Forms: 3–5 beke, (4 bike), 6 beake, 7 beck, 7– beak. [a. OF. beque-r, bequier, f. bec BEAK sb.1; cf. MHG. becken, bicken.]
1. To strike or seize with the beak, to peck; to push the beak (or snout) into: a. trans.
a. 1230. Ancr. R., 118. Ase deð þe pellican … mid hire owune bile bekie hire breoste.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Hocicar, to roote as a pigge, to busse, or beake.
1770. Langhorne, Plutarch (1879), I. 513/1. The crows came and beaked it for several days.
1861. Mrs. Norton, Lady La G., II. 296. Some poor woodland bird, who stays his flight … And beaks the plumage of his glistening wings.
b. absol. or intr.; occas. fig.
a. 1230. Ancr. R., 84. Þe bacbitare … bekeð mid his blake bile o cwike charoines.
1571. Fortescue, Forest Hist., 65 b. Certaine sparrowes … supposing they had been grapes, arrested them to beake thereon.
1780–6. Wolcott (P. Pindar), Odes R. Acad., Wks. I. 113. Like cocks, for ever at each other beaking.
† c. spec. in Falconry; see quot.
1486. Bk. St. Albans, C viij. She bekyth when she sewith: that is to say she wypith hir beke.
2. intr. To project or stick out with or as a beak; to put or push out the beak; to ‘put out the nose,’ i.e., to peep out. rare.
a. 1230. Ancr. R., 102. Totilde ancre … þet bekeð euer utward ase untowe brid ine cage.
1547. Boorde, Introd. Knowl., 207. On the toppe … is a thyng like a poding bekyng forward.
† 3. ? To thrust, strike with a pointed weapon.
[In the quotation biked may be for beked, as styked interchanges with steked, perh. the original reading here; but it may also be a distinct word. Mätzner compares MHG. bicken, and becken, ‘to pierce, strike through, hack, hew,’ ad. F. piquer, It. piccare.]
c. 1300. K. Alis., 2337. The thridde, Gildas, faste biked; Ac thorugh the throte he him styked.
