Also 8 bevil. [f. BEVEL sb.1]
1. trans. To cut away or otherwise bring to a slope; to reduce (a square edge) to a more obtuse angle; often with away, off, etc.
1677. Moxon, Mech. Exerc. (1703), 109. You may (if you will) Bevil away the outer edges of the Pannels.
1802. Paley, Nat. Theol., x. (1827), 474/2. The same rings are bevelled off at the upper and lower edges.
1851. Ruskin, Stones Ven., I. xvi. § 11. The wall is to be bevelled on the outside so as to increase the range of sight as far as possible.
1884. Tennyson, Becket, 171. All was planed and bevell’d smooth again.
fig. 1874. Blackie, Self-Cult., 16. To bevel down the corners of a character so constituted by a little æsthetical culture.
2. intr. To recede in a slope from the right angle; to slant.
1679. Plot, Staffordsh., 168. In the whole length it did not bevel, or depart from a true level, above an inch.
1727. Swift, Gulliver, III. ii. 188. Their houses are very ill built, the walls bevil, without one right angle in any apartment.
1862. Tyndall, Mountaineer., vii. 63. At one place, however, the precipice bevels off to a steep incline of smooth rock.
