heartbeat

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun

n. the most important part of something that keeps it alive or active.

n. the driving impulse or vital force of an organisation, place, or movement.

“Small businesses are the heartbeat of this town's economy.”

“The bustling marketplace has remained the heartbeat of the city for centuries, surviving numerous political and social upheavals.”

B2 · Upper Intermediate Countable noun Informal

n. a very short amount of time.

n. an extremely brief interval of time; almost exclusively used in the idiomatic phrase 'in a heartbeat'.

“If I had the money, I would move to Italy in a heartbeat.”

“She would have accepted the job offer in a heartbeat had it not required her to relocate across the country away from her family.”

C1 · Advanced Countable noun Computing Technical

n. a regular signal sent by a computer to show it is still working correctly.

n. a periodic signal generated by hardware or software to indicate normal operation or to synchronise components within a distributed system.

“The server sends a heartbeat every few seconds to let the network know it is online.”

“The monitoring software triggered an alert when it failed to receive a heartbeat from the primary database for more than thirty seconds.”