beat
n. countablen. the main rhythm or pulse in a piece of music. It's the steady sound that you can tap your foot or dance to.
n. the primary rhythmic unit or pulse in a piece of music, often marked by a recurring stress.
This song has a really good beat.
The drummer keeps a steady beat that the rest of the band follows.
Producers often layer complex percussion over a simple four-four beat to create a richer, more dynamic texture in the final track.
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”).
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.
From beatnik, or beat generation.
Often collocates with verbs like 'keep', 'find', or 'lose'. The prepositional phrase 'on the beat' means in time with the music.