Beor

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Beor is the name of a figure in the Hebrew Bible, the father of the prophet Balaam who was hired to curse the Israelites
2. A personal name borne in the Old Testament by the father of Balaam, the seer summoned by the king of Moab
3. The name of a biblical man, remembered as the father of Balaam, the diviner in the book of Numbers

Etymology: Before "beer" meant what it does now, the Old English "bēor" named a strong drink made from malted grain, with no hops at all. Hops, a flavouring that also helps preserve the drink, reached England in the 15th century, and the earlier unhopped brew, known as ale, gradually gave way to the hopped drink. The word "beer" kept the name while the thing it named changed. The word is an inherited Germanic one, not borrowed from Latin. Romans called the drink "cervisia", a term that survives in some Romance languages, while the Germanic peoples of northern Europe used their own word. Its exact ancestry before Old English is uncertain, so the older roots are best left aside.