Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wikipedia
thumb|upright=1.2|Worry beads made from different materials
Worry beads or kombolói, kompoloi (, , bead collection; plural: , ) is a string of beads manipulated with one or two hands and used to pass time in Greek and Cypriot culture. Unlike the similar prayer beads used in many religious traditions, worry beads have no religious or ceremonial purpose.
Usage examples of "worry beads".
She kept counting her worry beads and, little by little, they did their job.
He was staring out into the veld, and he had something in his hands that he was teasing like a string of Greek worry beads.
She rubbed the bright stones between her fingets like Greek worry beads and their smooth touch seemed to calm her and recharge her determination.
He lifted a string of wooden worry beads from the stone beside his knee and began running them through his fingers, eyes closed, lips moving, some kind of meditation, a way of passing the time.
When lost in thought, he picked the pieces up, turned them over and over like worry beads, and replaced them in new patterns.
He was too busy calculating, twisting his bracelet like a string of worry beads.
The Greek first officer owned a set of worry beads which he held in his hand and clicked when he was concentrating.
He had a habit of meditatively stroking his scar when troubled, as another man might finger a strand of worry beads.
The man next to Hamid-Jones played with his worry beads and moved his lips in prayer.
On Bergoti Street in Argostoli she opened a souvenir emporium that sold reproduction amphorae, worry beads, dolls dressed in the fustanella of the evzones, cassettes of syrtaki music, snorkelling equipment, statuettes of Pan playing his pipes with every evidence of concentration yet endowed with a resplendent and hyperbolical erection, owls of Minerva shaped in limestone, postcards, handmade rugs that were really made by machines in North Africa, porcelain dolphins, gods, goddesses, and caryatids, terracotta tragedians' masks, silver trinkets, bedspreads embellished with meanders, keyrings that humorously mimicked in miniature the motions of copulation .