When we thread a bead, what are we doing to the thread?

Question

What is the word for what we are doing to the thread when we "thread a bead"? Are we "beading" the thread? The closest word that I could find was "extrude" but I think that this is more of a manufacturing term than an arts & crafts term.

tchrist · Accepted Answer

Sure, you can both bead a thread and vice versa, as the first sense of the verb bead given by the OED is:

trans. To furnish, adorn, or work with beads.

And it gives citations sush as these:

1822 Beddoes Bride’s Trag. ɪɪɪ. iv, ― Drops enough to bead a thousand such [necklaces.] 
1856 Miss Yonge Daisy Ch. ɪ. xxii. (1879) 228 ― Morning dew, which beaded the webs of the spiders.

Peter Shor · Answer

You are threading the string through the bead. Definition 2a (2) from Merriam-Webster.

to pass (as a tape, line, or film) into or through something  (threaded a fresh roll of film into the camera).

John Lawler · Answer

This is the Provisional sense of verbing a noun.
If the noun "X" is a member of a large class of physical things, the Zero-derived Provisional transitive verb to X  means 'to provide with X'. Exemplorum gratia:

to seed a lawn
to water a horse
to oil machinery
to roof a house

(There is also an opposite Privative sense, which means 'to deprive of or remove X', ee.g.

to seed a pepper
to milk a cow
to peel an orange
to skin a cat
)

Since in the Provisional sense the direct object is provided with the verb's object noun, then whether one uses thread the beads or bead the thread depends on whether it is the beads or the thread that is viewed as the main "possessor" noun. Similar remarks apply to the verb string, which is probably more common in construction with bead.

When we thread a bead, what are we doing to the thread?

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