beat
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
Letters
4 characters
Language
English
word origin
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "beat", 4-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "beat" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "beat" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
beat is aEnglishnoun. It means: A stroke; a blow. Pronounced /biːt/. It ranks #1,042 in English word frequency. Often confused with Bt and but.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | beat |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /biːt/ |
| Letters | 4 |
| Frequency rank | #1,042 |
| Misspellings tracked | 4 |
| Confusable pairs | 20 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for beat is 4 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /biːt/. Corpus data places it at rank #1,042 in overall English word frequency, indicating it appears regularly in written and spoken text.Wiktionary records 19 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 4 documented wrong-spelling variants for beat, with forms such as "baet", "bbeat", and "beatt". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "Bt", "but", "bit", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: 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,… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is beat, spelled B-E-A-T, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A stroke; a blow.
- 2A pulsation or throb.
- 3A 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.
- 4A rhythm.
- 5A rhythm.
- 6The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
- 7The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency
- 8A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
- 9An area of a person's responsibility, especially
- 10An area of a person's responsibility, especially
- 11An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.
- 12That which beats, or surpasses, another or others.
- 13A precinct.
- 14A place of habitual or frequent resort.
- 15A place of habitual or frequent resort.
- 16A low cheat or swindler.
- 17The act of scouring, or ranging over, a tract of land to rouse or drive out game; also, those so engaged, collectively.
- 18A smart tap on the adversary's blade.
- 19A makeup look; compare beat one's face.
Etymology
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”).
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: baet,bbeat,beatt,ebat
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for beat
Misspelling Variants of "beat"
Frequency rank: #1,042 in English
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter B in our English index: