Part 568

Syn. -- To strike; pound; bang; buffet; maul; drub; thump; baste; thwack; thrash; pommel; cudgel; belabor; conquer; defeat; vanquish; overcome.

Beat, v. i. 1. To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.

The men of the city . . . beat at the door. Judges. xix. 22.

2. To move with pulsation or throbbing.

A thousand hearts beat happily. Byron.

3. To come or act with violence; to dash or fall with force; to strike anything, as rain, wind, and waves do.

Sees rolling tempests vainly beat below. Dryden.

They [winds] beat at the crazy casement. Longfellow.

The sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die. Jonah iv. 8.

Public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon ministers. Bacon.

4. To be in agitation or doubt. [Poetic]

To still my beating mind. Shak.

5. (Naut.) To make progress against the wind, by sailing in a zigzag line or traverse.

6. To make a sound when struck; as, the drums beat.

7. (Mil.) To make a succession of strokes on a drum; as, the drummers beat to call soldiers to their quarters.

8. (Acoustics & Mus.) 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.

A beating wind (Naut.), a wind which necessitates tacking in order to make progress. -- To beat about, to try to find; to search by various means or ways. Addison. -- To beat about the bush, to approach a subject circuitously. -- To beat up and down (Hunting), to run first one way and then another; -- said of a stag. -- To beat up for recruits, to go diligently about in order to get helpers or participators in an enterprise.

Beat (&?;), n. 1. A stroke; a blow.

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

2. A recurring stroke; a throb; a pulsation; as, a beat of the heart; the beat of the pulse.

3. (Mus.) (a) The rise or fall of the hand or foot, marking the divisions of time; a division of the measure so marked. In the rhythm of music the beat is the unit. (b) A transient grace note, struck immediately before the one it is intended to ornament.

4. (Acoustics & Mus.) A sudden swelling or reënforcement of a sound, recurring at regular intervals, and produced by the interference of sound waves of slightly different periods of vibrations; applied also, by analogy, to other kinds of wave motions; the pulsation or throbbing produced by the vibrating together of two tones not quite in unison. See Beat, v. i., 8.

5. A round or course which is frequently gone over; as, a watchman's beat.

6. A place of habitual or frequent resort.

7. A cheat or swindler of the lowest grade; -- often emphasized by dead; as, a dead beat.

Beat of drum (Mil.), a succession of strokes varied, in different ways, for particular purposes, as to regulate a march, to call soldiers to their arms or quarters, to direct an attack, or retreat, etc. -- Beat of a watch, or clock, the stroke or sound made by the action of the escapement. A clock is in beat or out of beat, according as the stroke is at equal or unequal intervals.

Beat, a. Weary; tired; fatigued; exhausted. [Colloq.]

Quite beat, and very much vexed and disappointed. Dickens.