beat

• enPR: bēt, IPA^(key): /biːt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Homophone: beet
• Rhymes: -iːt

From Middle English beten, from Old English bēatan (“to beat, pound, strike, lash, dash, thrust, hurt, injure”), from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰewd- (“to hit, strike”) (compare Old Irish fo·botha (“he threatened”), Latin confutō (“I strike down”), fūstis (“stick, club”), Albanian bahe (“sling”), Lithuanian baudžiù, Old Armenian բութ (butʿ)).

beat (plural beats)

1. A stroke; a blow.
   • Dryden

     He, with a careless beat, / Struck out the mute creation at a heat.

2. A pulsation or throb.

   a beat of the heart; the beat of the pulse

3. 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.
4. A rhythm.
5. (music) [specifically] The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians.
6. The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency
7. (authorship) A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect; a plot point or story development.
8. The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard.

   to walk the beat

   • 1886, Arthur Conan Doyle, chapter 3, in A Study in Scarlet:

     There has been a bad business during the night at 3, Lauriston Gardens, off the Brixton Road. Our man on the beat saw a light there about two in the morning, and as the house was an empty one, suspected that something was amiss.

   • 2019 January 29, Mike Masnick, “How My High School Destroyed An Immigrant Kid's Life Because He Drew The School's Mascot”, in Techdirt‎:

     […] the rise of embedding police into schools – so-called School Resource Officers (SROs), who are employed by the local police, but whose “beat” is a school. Those officers report to the local police department and not the school, and can, and frequently do, have different priorities.

9. (by extension) An area of a person's responsibility, especially
   1. In journalism, the primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.).
10. (dated) An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.
    • Scribner's Magazine

      It's a beat on the whole country.

11. (colloquial, dated) That which beats, or surpasses, another or others.

    the beat of him

12. (dated) A place of habitual or frequent resort.
13. (archaic) A low cheat or swindler.

    a dead beat

14. The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
15. (hunting) The act of scouring, or ranging over, a tract of land to rouse or drive out game; also, those so engaged, collectively.
    • Encyclopaedia of Sport

      Bears coming out of holes in the rocks at the last moment, when the beat is close to them.

16. (fencing) A smart tap on the adversary's blade.

• (piece of hip-hop music): track

beat (third-person singular simple present beats, present participle beating, simple past beat, past participle beaten or beat)

1. (transitive) To hit; strike

   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.

   Synonyms: knock, pound, strike, hammer, whack

   • 2012 August 21, Pilkington, Ed, “Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die?”, in The Guardian‎:

     In this account of events, the cards were stacked against Clemons from the beginning. His appeal lawyers have argued that he was physically beaten into making a confession, the jury was wrongfully selected and misdirected, and his conviction largely achieved on individual testimony with no supporting forensic evidence presented.

   • 1825?, "Hannah Limbrick, Executed for Murder", in The Newgate Calendar: comprising interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters, page 231:

     Thomas Limbrick, who was only nine years of age, said he lived with his mother when Deborah was beat: that his mother throwed her down all along with her hands; and then against a wall […]

2. (transitive) To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.

   He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.

3. (intransitive) To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.
   • Bible, Judges xix. 22

     The men of the city […] beat at the door.

   • Dryden

     Rolling tempests vainly beat below.

   • Longfellow

     They [winds] beat at the crazy casement.

   • Bible, Jonath iv. 8

     The sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die.

   • Francis Bacon

     Public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon ministers.

4. (intransitive) To move with pulsation or throbbing.
   • Byron

     A thousand hearts beat happily.

5. (transitive) To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do better than, outdo, or excel (someone) in a particular, competitive event.

   Jan had little trouble beating John in tennis. He lost five games in a row.

   No matter how quickly Joe finished his test, Roger always beat him.

   I just can't seem to beat the last level of this video game.

6. (intransitive, nautical) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
7. (transitive) To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting.
   • 1955, Robin Jenkins, The Cone-Gatherers, Canongate 2012, page 81:

     The part of the wood to be beaten for deer sloped all the way from the roadside to the loch.

8. To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.

   Beat the eggs and whip the cream.

9. (transitive, Britain, In haggling for a price) of a buyer, to persuade the seller to reduce a price

   He wanted $50 for it, but I managed to beat him down to $35.

10. (transitive) To indicate by beating or drumming.

    to beat a retreat; to beat to quarters

11. To tread, as a path.
    • Blackmore

      pass awful gulfs, and beat my painful way

12. To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble.
    • John Locke

      Why should any one […] beat his head about the Latin grammar who does not intend to be a critic?

13. To be in agitation or doubt.
    • Shakespeare

      to still my beating mind

14. To make a sound when struck.

    The drums beat.

15. (military, intransitive) To make a succession of strokes on a drum.

    The drummers beat to call soldiers to their quarters.

16. To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and less intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; said of instruments, tones, or vibrations, not perfectly in unison.
17. (transitive) To arrive at a place before someone.

    He beat me there.

    The place is empty, we beat the crowd of people who come at lunch.

18. (intransitive, Britain, slang, vulgar) To have sexual intercourse.

    Bruv, she came in just as we started to beat.

beat (comparative more beat, superlative most beat)

1. (US slang) exhausted

   After the long day, she was feeling completely beat.

2. dilapidated, beat up

   Dude, you drive a beat car like that and you ain’t gonna get no honeys.

3. (gay slang) fabulous

   Her makeup was beat!

4. (slang) boring
5. (slang, of a person) ugly

• (exhausted): See also Thesaurus:fatigued
• (dilapidated): See also Thesaurus:ramshackle
• (fabulous): fantabulosa; See also Thesaurus:wonderful
• (boring): See also Thesaurus:boring
• (ugly): See also Thesaurus:ugly

From beatnik

beat (plural beats)

1. A beatnik.
   • David Wills, Beatdom Issue Three

     The beats were pioneers with no destination, changing the world one impulse at a time.

• beat generation

• DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. →ISBN.

• Bate, Beta, abet, bate, beta

From Latin beātus.

• (Balearic, Central, Valencian) IPA^(key): /beˈat/
• Rhymes: -at

beat (feminine beata, masculine plural beats, feminine plural beates)

1. saint, beatified

• beateria

beat m (plural beats)

1. monk

• beatífic

• “beat” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “beat” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “beat” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “beat” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Borrowed from English beat.

• IPA^(key): /bit/

• Audio

  (file)

• Hyphenation: beat
• Rhymes: -it
• Homophones: bied, biedt, biet

beat m (plural beats, diminutive beatje n)

1. A beat, a rhythmic pattern, notably in music
2. (music) beat an early rock genre.

• beatmis
• beatmuziek

• bate

Borrowed from English beat.

beat

1. A beat (in music)

Borrowed from English beat.

beat (invariable)

1. beat (50s US literary and 70s UK music scenes)

beat m (invariable)

1. beat (rhythm accompanying music)

• beta

beat

1. third-person singular present active indicative of beō

From Late Latin bibitus (“drunk”), from Latin bibō (“drink”).

• IPA^(key): [be̯at]

beat m or n (feminine singular beată, masculine plural beți, feminine and neuter plural bete)

1. drunk, drunken, intoxicated; tipsy

• îmbătat
• băut

• treaz

• beție

• bea
• bețiv
• îmbăta

beat (plural beats)

1. happiness