Beat

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Contents

Beat may refer to:

[edit] Physical beating

  • To hit repeatedly. This is the original meaning. The subject of the verb may be a human or something inanimate, as in:-
"This is the fifth time this year so far that our rent collector has been beaten up and robbed."
"Storm waves beat against continuous jagged rocks and there was no hope of reaching a safe harbor."

[edit] Other forms of defeating

Via the idea of winning/losing a fist or stick fight, came:-

  • To defeat in a battle or fight.
  • To defeat in a non-violent competitive sport or game.
    • And from that came:-
    • For one thing to be faster than another or to reach something first.
      • For example, in scuba diving "beating the lung" meant trying to breathe faster than the breathing set could supply air.

[edit] Music

  • Beat (music), a pulse of sound that marks the metre or rhythm of a piece of music
  • Beatmatching, the aligning of the tempos of the songs by DJs
  • Beat music, a popular name in the 50's & 60's for what later became known as pop and rock, thus bands would be referred to as beat groups or beat combos
  • Beat (band), a Finnish band.
  • The Beat (band), a UK ska band of the early 1980s known in the US as The English Beat
  • The Beat (US), also known as The Paul Collins Beat, an American power pop group from the late '70s
  • Beat (King Crimson album), an album by progressive rock group King Crimson
  • Beat (Kaela Kimura song), a single released by Kaela Kimura in 2005
  • Beat (Chris Knox album), an album by New Zealand alternative musician Chris Knox
  • Beat (TV-2 album), a 1983 album by the Danish band TV-2
  • Beat magazine, Melbourne's biggest cab-audited street press.

[edit] Literature, Theatre & Film

  • Beat (film), a 'bit' is also known (particularly in the US) as a beat, referring to the smallest unit of dramatic action in a play.
  • Beat Film about writer William Seward Burroughs, directed by Gary Walkow with Courtney Love and Kiefer Sutherland
  • Directorial beat, an exchange of behavior between characters in a screenplay, usually taking the form of action-reaction.
  • Meter (poetry), the linguistic sound patterns of verse
  • Beat generation, writers of beat poetry and other beat literature
  • In film and screenwriting, a beat refers to a pause in an actor's dialogue

[edit] Science

  • Beat (acoustics), the oscillation between zero intensity and full intensity that occurs when two frequencies (which are not harmonically related) are added together, caused by alternating constructive and destructive interference of the pressure waves

[edit] Areas of territory

A "beaten path" is a path made by the repeated treadings of feet. Thus:

  • Beat, the territory and time that a police officer patrols
  • A subject of coverage by a journalist, e.g., "Her beat is politics."
  • Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men for the purpose of casual sex
  • Forest beat, a divisional subunit used for administering forests in India, see Forest range

[edit] Hunting

  • A "beat", in Scotland, is related to the above meaning of "beaten path" and refers to a route taken by deer stalkers (as deep hunters are called in that region).
  • "Beating for game" in hunting means to systematically attack vegetation to drive out of cover whatever animals or birds that the hunters are hunting.

[edit] Video Games

[edit] Miscellaneous

  • Beat (name), a common male given name in the German-speaking part of Switzerland
  • .beat, the unit of the Swatch Internet Time
  • Sailing upwind or beating, sailing a sailboat against the wind direction.
  • Beat is a brand of cola produced in Mexico by Coca-Cola
  • Honda Beat, an automobile produced by Honda Motor Co.
  • Beat may be used as slang to refer to someone or something that is otherwise considered boring or uneventful, or to refer to someone or something as uncool, or bad. Common in the Philadelphia area.
  • Beat may also be used as slang to refer to a marijuana smoking bowl that is ashed or is empty.

[edit] Etymology

  • "Beat" is derived from Anglo-Saxon bēatan, likely with some influence from the verb French battre, Late Latin battuere = "to beat", of Germanic origin.
  • The Swiss man's name "Beat" came from Latin beatus = "blessed".

[edit] See also