Forms: 5–7 beuer, 6 beuoir, boeuer, boyuer, 6–7 boier, 7 beauer, 7–9 beaver, bover. [a. OF. beivre (also baivre, beivere, boivre) drinking, drink, subst. use of OF. beivre, boivre (now boire) pres. inf.:—L. bibĕre to drink. (In med.L. biber, bibera, biberis.) With sense 3, cf. the parallel OF. form beverie, beverry, in the sense of a lunch or collation in a monastery.]
† 1. Drink, liquor for drinking. Obs.
1451. Marg. Paston, Lett., 149 (1872), I. 201. I can gett none ell [eels] yett; as for bever ther is promysid me somme.
† 2. A potation, a drinking: a time for drinking.
1499. Promp. Parv., 34. Beuer, drinkinge tyme, biberrium.
1552. Huloet, Beuer, or drinckyng, or potacion.
1580. Baret, Alv., B 876. A Boeuer or drinking betweene dinner and supper.
1626. H. Mason, Epicure’s Fast, iii. 23. Their custome of drinking which I call a continuall Bever.
3. A small repast between meals; a ‘snack,’ nuncheon, or lunch; esp. one in the afternoon between mid-day dinner and supper. Chiefly dial.
1500. Ortus Voc., in Promp. Parv., 34, note. Merendula, a beuer after none.
1573. Cooper, Thesaurus, Merenda … a collation, a noone meale, a boyuer.
c. 1590. Marlowe, Faust., vi. Thirty meals a-day and ten bevers.
1599. Hakluyt, Voy., II. I. 60. As they vse to ring to dinner or beuoir in cloisters.
1602. Fulbecke, 2nd Pt. Parall., Introd. 3. The booke of Littletons tenures is there breakfast, their dinner, their boier, their supper, and their rere-banquet.
1650. Bulwer, Anthropomet, xxii. 246. Children of Princes … were to be allowed their Bevers or afternoons Nuncians.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh., 286. Sent hungry with a bever to her Father in the field.
1750. W. Ellis, Mod. Husb., V. iii. 146. They eat wholly on this [cheese] and bread at one time of the day, which they call their beaver, and this is commonly about four of the clock in the afternoon.
1884. M. Morris, in Eng. Illustr. Mag., Nov., 73. [At Eton], Came up from cricket in the summer afternoons for ‘bever.’
fig. a. 1640. Jackson, Creed, XI. xxxv. Wks. XI. 99. Are our daily sermons but as so many bevers of wind whose efficacy vanisheth with the breath that uttereth them.
