beat means A stroke; a blow.
beat is pronounced /biːt/.
Why “beat” is a great word
To strike or hit repeatedly, typically in a rhythmic manner. From Middle English beten, from Old English bēatan ("to beat, pound, strike"), from Proto-Germanic *bautaną ("to beat, push"). Unlike "hit," which implies a single, definitive contact, or "defeat," which concerns the final outcome of a contest, to beat is the sustained, iterative act of percussion itself. It is the steady thrum of a telltale heart beneath the floorboards, the methodical punishment of a rug hanging on a line, the blacksmith's hammer falling in its ancient, unbroken cycle—a fundamental rhythm that measures out either a life or its quiet extinguishing, the world's oldest proof that meaning accumulates only through repetition.
Etymology
From Middle English bet (simple past of beten "to beat"), from Old English bēot (simple past of bēatan "to beat"). Middle English bet would regularly yield *beet; the modern form is influenced by the present stem and the past participle beaten, perhaps by analogy with the Early Modern English paradigm eat:eat (“ate”):eaten. Pronunciations with /ɛ/ (from Middle English bette, alternative simple past of beten) are possibly analogous to read (/ɹɛd/), led, met, etc.
noun
- A stroke; a blow.e.g.“He, […]with a careless beat, / Struck out the mute creation at a heat.”
- A pulsation or throb.e.g.“a beat of the heart”
- A pulse on the beat level, the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic unit. Thus a beat is the basic time unit of a piece.
- A rhythm.e.g.“I love watching her dance to a pretty drum beat with a bouncy rhythm!”
- A rhythm.; The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians.
- The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
- The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency.
- A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
- An area of a person's responsibility, especially; The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard.e.g.“to walk the beat”
- An area of a person's responsibility, especially; The primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.).e.g.“As an adult, I became a journalist whose beat is the environment. In a way, I’ve turned my youthful preoccupations into a profession.”
- An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.e.g.“It's a beat on the whole country.”
- That which beats, or surpasses, another or others.e.g.“the beat of him”
- A precinct.
- A place of habitual or frequent resort.
- A place of habitual or frequent resort.; An area frequented by gay men in search of sexual activity. See gay beat.
- A beatnik.e.g.“The beats were pioneers with no destination, changing the world one impulse at a time.”
verb
- To hit; to strike.e.g.“As soon as she heard that her father had died, she went into a rage and beat the wall with her fists until her knuckles bled.”
- To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.e.g.“He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.”
- To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.e.g.“[…] the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door […]”
- To move with pulsation or throbbing.e.g.“A thousand hearts beat happily.”
- To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than (someone); to excel in a particular, competitive event.e.g.“Jan had little trouble beating John in tennis. He lost five games in a row.”
- To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
- To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting.e.g.“The part of the wood to be beaten for deer sloped all the way from the roadside to the loch.”
- To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.e.g.“Beat the eggs and whip the cream.”
- To persuade the seller to reduce a price.e.g.“He wanted $50 for it, but I managed to beat him down to $35.”
- To indicate by beating or drumming.e.g.“to beat a retreat; to beat to quarters”
- To tread, as a path.e.g.“While I this unexampled task essay, / Pass awful gulfs, and beat my painful way, / Celestial Dove! divine assistance bring, / Sustain me on thy strong-extended wing,”
- To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble.e.g.“I know not why any one should waste his time, and beat his head about the Latin grammar, who does not intend to be a critick, or make speeches, and write dispatches in it.”
- To be in agitation or doubt.e.g.“to still my beating mind”
- To make a sound when struck.e.g.“The drums beat.”
- To make a succession of strokes on a drum.e.g.“The drummers beat to call soldiers to their quarters.”
- simple past tense of beat
adj
- Exhausted.e.g.“After the long day, she was feeling completely beat.”
- Dilapidated, beat up.e.g.“Dude, you drive a beat car like that and you ain’t gonna get no honeys.”
- Having impressively attractive makeup.e.g.“Her face was beat for the gods!”
- Boring.
- Ugly.
- Relating to the Beat Generation.e.g.“beat poetry”
Words closest in meaning
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