the beard: the hair on a man's chin and jaw, treated in the Bible as the public sign of his standing as a grown, free man.
This word names a body part, the hair of the chin and jaw, but in the Bible the beard is never just hair. It is the visible badge of adult male honor. Anointing oil runs down over it in blessing, a kinsman takes hold of it in greeting, an enemy shears it off to shame a man, a mourner cuts or plucks it in grief, and the law watches over how a man may treat it. The single English word covers all of this, but every appearance is really about a man's dignity, where the culture located it, on his face.
The senses below are not different meanings of the word. They are the different things people did to and with the beard, and what each act announced about the man. The same beard that signals honor when oil drips onto it signals disgrace when half of it is shaved away. So the word holds together as one idea, the beard as a man's standing, while the scenes around it run from consecration to catastrophe.
It is worth knowing that this same three-letter root also gives Hebrew its words for being old and for an elder or leader. In Hebrew, to call someone an elder was once to call him a bearded one. That link is not part of what this particular word means, but it shows how deeply the culture tied the beard to a man worth listening to.