The beazle or collet of a ring, that which contains the apple of the eye, a kind of ornament of women.
1825, Thomas Dudley Fosbroke, Encyclopaedia of Antiquities: and elements of Archaeology, volume 1, page 212:
The figures upon seals were as various as among us, except that the ancients used figures of their ancestors, friends, or even themselves. In Stosch is a symbolical ring, supported by two cornucopias. Upon the beazle is a mask in relief, and in the circle of the ring a crescent and star.
ca 1800—1850, A Practical Treatise on Midwifery (Nicolas Charles Chailly-Honoré, author; G. S. Bedford, editor), page 470:
Now let us suppose that the placenta is inserted on one of these muscles, which is not at all uncommon, and that the circular fibres, the most remote from the orifice of the tube, should contract spasmodically, the after-birth will be enclosed in this species of cavity, as a stone in the beazle of a ring (dans le chaton d'une bague).
1893, a translation of Mīr-Khvānd's Persian Rawżat_aṣ-ṣafāʾ by E. Rehatsek (edited by F. F. Arbuthnot), part II, volume I, page 145:
A short time afterwards Waraqah Bin Naufil died, and therefore could not live to witness the period of the mission, but his lordship said: ‘I have seen the beazle of the ring in paradise, dissed in green robes; for he has believed in me.’ And in traditions ‘the beazle of the ring’ means Waraqah Bin Naufil.
1889, A group of Eastern Romances and Stories, from the Persian, Tamil, and Urdu, translated by W. A. Clouston; The Three Deceitful Women, page 355:
ONCE on a time there were three whales of the sea of fraud and deceit — three dragons of the nature of thunder and the quickness of lightning — three defamers of honor and reputation — in other words, three men-deceiving, lascivious women [...]. One of them was sitting in the court of justice of the Kází's embraces; the second was the precious gem of the bazár-master's diadem of compliance; and the third was the beazle and ornament of the signet-ring of the life and soul of the superintendent of police. They were constantly entrapping the fawns of the prairie of deceit, [...]
1741, A Voyage into the Levant, a translation by ??? of Joseph Pitton de Tournefort's 1717Relation d'un voyage du Levant; in the section Journey to Armenia, page 87:
The Rib is purple, the Nervure hairy, whitish, [...]. All these parts sustains Tops like those of the Fuller's Thistle, two inches and a half long, and one and a half in diameter, surrounded at their Basis with a Row of Leaves of the same Figure and Tissure as the bottom, [...]. Each top consists of several Scales seven or eight lines long, [...] the Embryos of the Fruit [...] are about five lines long, pale-green, pointed at bottom about four lines think, set off with four Corners hollow'd at their Summities into five holes or beazles with notch'd rims, [...].
ca 1878, "Magic", by E. Rehatsek, published as Article XIV in the Journal of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, No. XXXVI, volume XIV, on page 199:
It is believed that certain philosophers and astrologers construct talismans from their observations of stars for their performance of every kind of wonderful acts, [...] They draw figures on stones, they have their amulets and beazles.
* This work, a compilation by Jas. Burgess of Lists of the Antiquarian Remains in the Bombay Presidency published in 1885, on page 260 translates an Arabic or Persian inscription as follows:
In the name of Allah the merciful, the clement! Shâh of the world, moon of the world, light of the world, [...] the most great of the world, the most generous of the world, the beazle of the world, the most exquisite of the exquisites of the world, [...]
1941, Sullivan's Travels, by Preston Sturges, published in Five Screenplays, →ISBN, page 77:
Sullivan, the girl and the butler get to the ground. The girl wears a turtle-neck sweater, a cap slightly sideways, a torn coat, turned-up pants and sneakers.
SULLIVAN Why don't you go back with the car... You look about as much like a boy as Mae West.
