beat

noun

1. A stroke; a blow.

   “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.

   “I love watching her dance to a pretty drum beat with a bouncy rhythm!”

5. A rhythm.
6. The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
7. The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency.
8. A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
9. (broadly)An area of a person's responsibility, especially

   “to walk the beat”

   “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.”

   “[…]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.”

   “"We are looking at being able to fly [drones] tens of miles from base, which is going to make a huge difference. It is the equivalent of having bobbies on the beat."”

10. (broadly)An area of a person's responsibility, especially

    “As an adult, I became a journalist whose beat is the environment. In a way, I’ve turned my youthful preoccupations into a profession.”

11. (dated)An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.

    “It's a beat on the whole country.”

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

    “the beat of him”

13. (Southern-US, dated, obsolete)A precinct.
14. (dated)A place of habitual or frequent resort.
15. (Australia, dated)A place of habitual or frequent resort.
16. (archaic)A low cheat or swindler.

    “a dead beat”

    ““If I get away I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all, though that’s worth something.”

17. The act of scouring, or ranging over, a tract of land to rouse or drive out game; also, those so engaged, collectively.

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

18. A smart tap on the adversary's blade.
19. (slang)A makeup look; compare beat one's face.

    “She made sure to give fans all the details about her beat in the caption.”

20. A beatnik.

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

verb

1. (transitive)To hit; to 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.”

   “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 […]”

   “The case of a woman named Qu Hua from Qiqihaer, Heilongjiang, illustrates this possibility. She married a worker named Xu Baocheng in 1980, and they got along very well until she gave birth to a girl. Then Xu immediately began to beat Qu, and forced her and the baby to live in a small shack.”

   “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.”

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.

   “[…] the men of the city, certain sons of Belial, beset the house round about, and beat at the door […]”

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

   “This public envy, seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings, and estates themselves.”

   “Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below.”

   “What tale do the roaring ocean, / And the nightwind, bleak and wild, / As they beat at the crazy casement, / Tell to that little child?”

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

   “A thousand hearts beat happily.”

   “O heart, how fares it with thee now, ⁠That thou should’st fail from thy desire, ⁠Who scarcely darest to inquire, ‘What is it makes me beat so low?’”

5. (transitive)To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than (someone); to excel 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.”

   “There's nothing in this world beats a 52 Vincent and a red-headed girl.”

6. (intransitive)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.

   “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. (UK, transitive)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.

    “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,”

12. To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble.

    “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.”

13. To be in agitation or doubt.

    “to still my beating mind”

14. To make a sound when struck.

    “The drums beat.”

15. (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 lesser 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. (Multicultural-London-English, intransitive, slang, vulgar)To have sexual intercourse.

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

    “Millie B gets ten shags a week. New day, different guy, that's just peek. You can't name a guy that you haven't tried to beat. You can't name a guy that you haven't tried to beat.”

19. (slang, transitive)To rob; to cheat or scam.

    “He beat me out of 12 bucks last night.”

    “I already beat him, but he hasn't realized it yet.”

    “When one of 'em runs up a bill here, then goes off and deals somewhere else, and dodges me every time he sees me, that's the man I'm after with a sharp stick. [...] Honest people often get into tight places, and we would rather help 'em than hurt 'em then. But some just try to beat you.”

20. simple past tense of beat
21. (colloquial, especially, form-of, participle, past)past participle of beat

adj

1. (US, slang)Exhausted.

   “After the long day, she was feeling completely beat.”

   “I stayed in San Francisco a week and had the beatest time of my life. Marylou and I walked around for miles, looking for food-money.”

2. (slang)Dilapidated, beat up.

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

3. Having impressively attractive makeup.

   “Her face was beat for the gods!”

4. (slang)Boring.
5. (slang)Ugly.
6. Relating to the Beat Generation.

   “beat poetry”