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Beat   /bit/   Listen
Beat

verb
(past beat; past part. beaten; pres. part. beating)
1.
Come out better in a competition, race, or conflict.  Synonyms: beat out, crush, shell, trounce, vanquish.  "We beat the competition" , "Harvard defeated Yale in the last football game"
2.
Give a beating to; subject to a beating, either as a punishment or as an act of aggression.  Synonyms: beat up, work over.  "The teacher used to beat the students"
3.
Hit repeatedly.  "Beat the table with his shoe"
4.
Move rhythmically.  Synonyms: pound, thump.
5.
Shape by beating.
6.
Make a rhythmic sound.  Synonyms: drum, thrum.  "The drums beat all night"
7.
Glare or strike with great intensity.
8.
Move with a thrashing motion.  Synonym: flap.  "The eagle beat its wings and soared high into the sky"
9.
Sail with much tacking or with difficulty.
10.
Stir vigorously.  Synonym: scramble.  "Beat the cream"
11.
Strike (a part of one's own body) repeatedly, as in great emotion or in accompaniment to music.  "Beat one's foot rhythmically"
12.
Be superior.  "This sure beats work!"
13.
Avoid paying.  Synonym: bunk.
14.
Make a sound like a clock or a timer.  Synonyms: tick, ticktack, ticktock.  "The grandfather clock beat midnight"
15.
Move with a flapping motion.  Synonym: flap.
16.
Indicate by beating, as with the fingers or drumsticks.
17.
Move with or as if with a regular alternating motion.  Synonyms: pulsate, quiver.
18.
Make by pounding or trampling.
19.
Produce a rhythm by striking repeatedly.
20.
Strike (water or bushes) repeatedly to rouse animals for hunting.
21.
Beat through cleverness and wit.  Synonyms: circumvent, outfox, outsmart, outwit, overreach.  "She outfoxed her competitors"
22.
Be a mystery or bewildering to.  Synonyms: amaze, baffle, bewilder, dumbfound, flummox, get, gravel, mystify, nonplus, perplex, pose, puzzle, stick, stupefy, vex.  "Got me--I don't know the answer!" , "A vexing problem" , "This question really stuck me"
23.
Wear out completely.  Synonyms: exhaust, tucker, tucker out, wash up.  "I'm beat" , "He was all washed up after the exam"
noun
1.
A regular route for a sentry or policeman.  Synonym: round.
2.
The rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart.  Synonyms: heartbeat, pulsation, pulse.
3.
The basic rhythmic unit in a piece of music.  Synonyms: musical rhythm, rhythm.  "The conductor set the beat"
4.
A single pulsation of an oscillation produced by adding two waves of different frequencies; has a frequency equal to the difference between the two oscillations.
5.
A member of the beat generation; a nonconformist in dress and behavior.  Synonym: beatnik.
6.
The sound of stroke or blow.
7.
(prosody) the accent in a metrical foot of verse.  Synonyms: cadence, measure, meter, metre.
8.
A regular rate of repetition.
9.
A stroke or blow.
10.
The act of beating to windward; sailing as close as possible to the direction from which the wind is blowing.
adjective
1.
Very tired.  Synonyms: all in, bushed, dead.  "So beat I could flop down and go to sleep anywhere" , "Bushed after all that exercise" , "I'm dead after that long trip"



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beatniks
beats
downbeat
offbeat
upbeat


WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University


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"Beat" Quotes from Famous Books



... direction of the lighted avenue of tents and shacks under the trees. He caught a last look in Joanne's eyes of anxiety and fear. Glancing back out of the darkness that swallowed him up, he saw her pause for a moment in the lighted doorway, and look in his direction. His heart beat faster. Joyously he laughed under his breath. It was strangely new and pleasing to have some one thinking of ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... scream and cry. Then our self-sacrificing nurses walk with us; they rock us, they swing us, they toss us up and down, they jounce us from top to bottom, till the wonder is that every organ in our bodies is not displaced. They beat on glass and tin and iron to distract our attention and drown out our noise by a bigger one; they shake back and forth before our eyes all things that glitter and blaze; they shout and sing songs; the house and the neighborhood are searched ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "and, mark me, if a face goes for aught, he's general enough to beat Gage—and that the man paused, and then added: "that sluggard Howe. And would to God I ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... together with ropes, boys and girls from Bristol town. Her master, my father that was (I shall know him again), got tired of her, and wanted to give her away to one of his kernes. She would not have that; so he hung her up hand and foot, and beat her that she died. There was an abbey hard by, and the Church laid on him a penance,—all that they dared get out of him,—that he should give me to the monks, being then a seven-years' boy. Well, I grew up in that abbey; they taught me my fa fa mi fa: but I liked better conning of ballads and hearing ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... word from home—we kept an eager look-out for shore-craft putting out, and when our messenger arrived after a long beat, the boat warp was curled into his hand and the side ladder rattled to his feet before he had time to hail the deck. With him came a coasting pilot seeking employ, a voluble Welshman, who did not leave us a minute in ignorance of the fact that "he knew th' coast, indeed, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone


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