1. A man with a long beard.
1786. trans. Beckford’s Vathek (1883), 128. Loud must have been the sound of the tymbals to overpower the blubbering of the Emir and his longbeards.
¶ b. A pseudo-etymol. rendering of LOMBARD.
1647–8. Cotterell, Davila’s Hist. Fr. (1678), 3. Famous incursions of the Longbeards.
1889. [see LONGOBARDIAN].
2. An epiphytic plant, Tillandsia usneoides, found in the forests of the southern United States: also called long-moss, Spanish moss.
1858. Simmonds, Dict. Trade, Long-beard, a name for a kind of moss or epiphyte brought down the Mississippi.
1866. in Treas. Bot.
3. A bellarmine.
1878. Jewitt, Ceramic Art Gt. Brit., I. 92. The Bellarmine, or Grey Beard, or Long Beard, as it was commonly called.
