beat
A stroke; a blow.
Other meanings
A pulsation or throb.
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.
Word history
From Old English "bēatan" (to beat, pound, strike, lash, dash, thrust, hurt, injure).
Where this comes from
This definition is adapted from “beat” on Wiktionary, by its contributors, published under CC BY-SA 4.0. This page is published under the same licence.