beat
/biːt/noun, verb, adjective
beat is spelled B-E-A-T: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 102 times per million words in written English, the 1,048th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). People search “beat vs beet” about 720 times a month (Google, United States). As a noun, beat means “A stroke; a blow” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of beat is beats.
How many letters and syllables are in beat?
| Letters | 4: B-E-A-T |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 1 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | 102 times per million words; the 1,048th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
| Pairs people search | |
| Sounds like | |
| Same letters |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.
How common is beat?
Beat appears 102 times per million words in written English, the 1,048th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce beat?
- /biːt/
As a verb (“simple past tense of beat”): /biːt/, /bɛt/.
Beat has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-beat.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Words people confuse with beat
Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).
Sounds like: beet (Wiktionary's homophone list; some hold only in some accents).
Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).
What rhymes with beat?
No other word on PlainSpell ends in the same sounds as beat.
Spelled with the same letters in another order: beta, bate, abet.
Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).
Forms of beat
- beats plural, present, singular, he/she/it
- beating participle, present
- beaten participle, past
- more beat comparative
- most beat superlative
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does beat mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
A stroke; a blow.
- 2
A pulsation or throb.
a beat of the heart
- 3
A pulse on the beat level, the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic unit. Thus a beat is the basic time unit of a piece.
- 4
A rhythm.
I love watching her dance to a pretty drum beat with a bouncy rhythm!
- 5
The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians.
- 6
The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
- 7
The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency.
- 8
A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
- 9
A beatnik.
verb
- 1
To hit; to strike.
As soon as she heard that her father had died, she went into a rage and beat the wall with her fists until her knuckles bled.
- 2
To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.
He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.
- 3
To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.
- 4
To move with pulsation or throbbing.
- 5
To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than (someone); to excel in a particular, competitive event.
Jan had little trouble beating John in tennis. He lost five games in a row.
- 6
To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
- 7
To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting.
- 8
To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.
Beat the eggs and whip the cream.
- 9
simple past tense of beat
- 10
colloquialpast participle of beat
adjective
- 1
USslangExhausted.
After the long day, she was feeling completely beat.
- 2
slangDilapidated, beat up.
Dude, you drive a beat car like that and you ain’t gonna get no honeys.
- 3
Having impressively attractive makeup.
Her face was beat for the gods!
- 4
slangBoring.
- 5
slangUgly.
- 6
Relating to the Beat Generation.
beat poetry
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Beat in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | battement , ronde , secteur , domaine , battue , battre |
| Portuguese | batida , bater , abatido, batido |
| Spanish | latido, pulsación , jurisdicción , sector , pulsaciones (por minuto) , ritmo |
| German | schlagen , Schlag, Grundschlag , Beat, Takt , Schwebung |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does beat come from?
Inherited 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”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).