beat

Relating to the Beat Generation.

Adjective US, slang

  1. 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. - 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 10, in On the Road, Viking Press, →OCLC, part 2:
  2. 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. Boring.
  5. Ugly.

Origin

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.

Forms

more beat most beat

Adjective Entry 2

  1. Relating to the Beat Generation.
    • beat poetry

Origin

From beatnik, or beat generation.

Forms

more beat most beat Beat

Noun Entry 3

  1. A stroke; a blow.
    • He, […]with a careless beat, / Struck out the mute creation at a heat. - 1687, [John Dryden], “(please specify the page number)”, in The Hind and the Panther. A Poem, in Three Parts, 2nd edition, London: […] Jacob...
  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!

    1. (music) The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians.

  5. The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
  6. The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency.
  7. A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
  8. 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...
    • […]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...

    1. The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard.

    2. (journalism) The primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.).

      • As an adult, I became a journalist whose beat is the environment. In a way, I’ve turned my youthful preoccupations into a profession. - 2020 April, Elizabeth Kolbert, “Why we won't avoid a climate...

      Synonyms: newsbeat

  9. An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.
    • It's a beat on the whole country. - 1898, unknown author, Scribner's Magazine, volume 24:
  10. That which beats, or surpasses, another or others.
    • the beat of him
  11. A precinct.
  12. A place of habitual or frequent resort.

Origin

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-der.? Proto-Germanic *bautaną Proto-West Germanic *bautan Old English bēatan Middle English beten English beat Inherited from Middle English beten, from Old English bēatan (“to beat, pound, strike, lash, dash, thrust, hurt, injure”), from Proto-West Germanic *bautan, from Proto-Germanic *bautaną (“to push, strike”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch boten, botten, butten (“to push, strike”), German boßen (“to thrash”), Gothic *𐌱𐌰𐌿𐍄𐌰𐌽 (*bautan, “to beat, strike”) (whence, probably, Galician and Portuguese botar (“to expel; to throw”)); also Latin fūstis (“club, cudgel, knobbed stick, staff”), *fūtō (“to strike”), Albanian bahe, hobe (“sling”), Armenian բութ (butʻ), բույթ (buytʻ, “thumb”).

Forms

beats

Related

backing track

Derived

afrobeat afterbeat backbeat back beat bad beat Balearic beat barber beats beatbox beat cop beat for nothing beat frequency oscillator Beatles beatless beatmaker beatmatch beatmatching beatmix beat panel beat parry beatscape beatscript beat sheet beatsman beatsmith

Noun Entry 4

  1. A beatnik.
    • The beats were pioneers with no destination, changing the world one impulse at a time. - 2008 March, David Wills, Beatdom, number 3:

Forms

beats Beat

Verb Entry 5

  1. 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 […] - 1825?, “Hannah Limbrick,...
    • 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...

    Synonyms: knock pound strike hammer whack abuse aggress assail assault attack beat beleaguer bepommel beset besiege bombard charge come down on dust up fall on fall upon hit impugn invade

  2. To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.
    • He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.
  3. 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 […] - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Judges 19:22:
    • The sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die. - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Jonah 4:8:
    • This public envy, seemeth to beat chiefly upon principal officers or ministers, rather than upon kings, and estates themselves. - 1625, Francis Bacon, “Of Envy”, in Essayes:
  4. To move with pulsation or throbbing.
    • A thousand hearts beat happily. - 1812–18, George Gordon Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, verse 21:
    • 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?’ - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto IV”, in In Memoriam, London:...
  5. 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.
  6. To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
  7. 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. - 1955, Robin Jenkins, The Cone-Gatherers, Canongate, published 2012, page 81:
  8. To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.
    • Beat the eggs and whip the cream.
  9. To persuade the seller to reduce a price.
    • He wanted $50 for it, but I managed to beat him down to $35.

    Synonyms: negotiate

  10. 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, - 1712, Sir Richard Blackmore, Creation: A...
  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. - 1693, John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning...

Forms

beats beating beat beated beaten no-table-tags glossary beatest beateth -

Derived

abeat bad to beat beatable beat about beat about the bush beat a dead horse beat a hasty retreat beat all beat a retreat beat around the bush beat as one beat back beat Banaghan beat down beatee beater beat everything beat feet beat hollow beating-heart transplant beat into beat into a cocked hat beat into fits beat into shape

Verb Entry 6

  1. simple past tense of beat
  2. past participle of beat