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Beat vs Step - What's the difference?

beat | step |

In transitive terms the difference between beat and step

is that beat is to indicate by beating or drumming while step is to set, as the foot.

In intransitive terms the difference between beat and step

is that beat is to move with pulsation or throbbing while step is to walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely.

As an adjective beat

is exhausted.

beat

English

Etymology 1

From (etyl) beten, from (etyl) ). Compare (etyl) batre, (etyl) battre.

Noun

(en noun)
  • A stroke; a blow.
  • * Dryden
  • He, with a careless beat , / Struck out the mute creation at a heat.
  • A pulsation or throb.
  • a beat''' of the heart; the '''beat of the pulse
  • 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.
  • A rhythm.
  • (music) A transient grace note, struck immediately before the one it is intended to ornament.
  • The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency
  • A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect.
  • The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard.
  • to walk the beat
  • *
  • (by extension) An area of a person's responsibility, especially
  • # In journalism, the primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.).
  • (dated) A place of habitual or frequent resort.
  • (archaic) A low cheat or swindler.
  • ''a dead beat
  • The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
  • Derived terms
    * afterbeat * backbeat, back beat * beat the meat * D-beat * deadbeat * downbeat * drumbeat * forebeat * heartbeat * inbeat * misbeat * offbeat * onbeat * outbeat * underbeat * upbeat * walk the beat
    See also
    * (piece of hip-hop music) track

    Verb

  • To hit; to knock; to pound; to strike.
  • As soon as she heard that Wiktionary was shutting down, she went into a rage and beat the wall with her fists until her knuckles bled.
  • * {{quote-news, date = 21 August 2012
  • , first = Ed , last = Pilkington , title = Death penalty on trial: should Reggie Clemons live or die? , newspaper = The Guardian , url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/21/death-penalty-trial-reggie-clemons?newsfeed=true , page = , passage = In this account of events, the cards were stacked against Clemons from the beginning. His appeal lawyers have argued that he was physically beaten into making a confession, the jury was wrongfully selected and misdirected, and his conviction largely achieved on individual testimony with no supporting forensic evidence presented.}}
  • To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.
  • He danced hypnotically while she beat the atabaque.
  • To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.
  • * Bible, Judges xix. 22
  • The men of the city beat at the door.
  • * Dryden
  • Rolling tempests vainly beat below.
  • * Longfellow
  • They [winds] beat at the crazy casement.
  • * Bible, Jonath iv. 8
  • The sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die.
  • * Francis Bacon
  • Public envy seemeth to beat chiefly upon ministers.
  • To move with pulsation or throbbing.
  • * Byron
  • A thousand hearts beat happily.
  • To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do better than, outdo, or excel (someone) in a particular, competitive event.
  • Jan had little trouble beating John in tennis. He lost five games in a row.
    No matter how quickly Joe finished his test, Roger always beat him.
    I just can't seem to beat the last level of this video game.
  • (nautical) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
  • To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting.
  • * 1955 , (Robin Jenkins), The Cone-Gatherers , Canongate 2012, p. 81:
  • The part of the wood to be beaten for deer sloped all the way from the roadside to the loch.
  • To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.
  • Beat the eggs and whip the cream.
  • (transitive, UK, In haggling for a price) of a buyer, to persuade the seller to reduce a price
  • He wanted $50 for it, but I managed to beat him down to $35.
  • (nonstandard)
  • * 1825? , "Hannah Limbrick, Executed for Murder", in The Newgate Calendar: comprising interesting memoirs of the most notorious characters , page 231:
  • Thomas Limbrick, who was only nine years of age, said he lived with his mother when Deborah was beat : that his mother throwed her down all along with her hands; and then against a wall
  • To indicate by beating or drumming.
  • to beat''' a retreat''; ''to '''beat to quarters
  • To tread, as a path.
  • * Blackmore
  • pass awful gulfs, and beat my painful way
  • To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble.
  • * John Locke
  • Why should any one beat his head about the Latin grammar who does not intend to be a critic?
  • To be in agitation or doubt.
  • * Shakespeare
  • to still my beating mind
  • To make a sound when struck.
  • The drums beat .
  • (military) To make a succession of strokes on a drum.
  • The drummers beat to call soldiers to their quarters.
  • To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and less intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; said of instruments, tones, or vibrations, not perfectly in unison.
  • Derived terms
    * beat a retreat * beat down * beat off * beater * beat about the bush * beat senseless * beat somebody to the punch * beat some sense into * beat the clock * beat the pants off * beat to quarters * beat up * beat to a pulp * bebeat * forbeat * inbeat * misbeat * overbeat * tobeat * underbeat * wife-beater

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • (US slang) exhausted
  • After the long day, she was feeling completely beat .
  • dilapidated, beat up
  • Dude, you drive a beat car like that and you ain’t gonna get no honeys.
  • (gay slang) fabulous
  • Her makeup was beat!
  • (slang) boring
  • (slang, of a person) ugly
  • Synonyms
    * See also

    Etymology 2

    From (beatnik)

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A beatnik.
  • Derived terms
    * beat generation

    References

    * DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0130493465.

    step

    English

    Verb

  • To move the foot in walking; to advance or recede by raising and moving one of the feet to another resting place, or by moving both feet in succession.
  • To walk; to go on foot; especially, to walk a little distance.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-01, volume=407, issue=8838
  • , page=13 (Technology Quarterly), magazine=(The Economist) , title= Ideas coming down the track , passage=A “moving platform” scheme
  • To walk slowly, gravely, or resolutely.
  • * Home the swain retreats, His flock before him stepping to the fold.
  • (figuratively) To move mentally; to go in imagination.
  • * They are stepping almost three thousand years back into the remotest antiquity. — (Alexander Pope)
  • To set, as the foot.
  • (nautical) To fix the foot of (a mast) in its step ; to erect.
  • * 1898 , (Joseph Conrad),
  • We put everything straight, stepped the long-boat's mast for our skipper, who was in charge of her, and I was not sorry to sit down for a moment.

    Derived terms

    * step aside (to walk a little distance from the rest; to retire from company) * step down * step forth (to move or come forth) * step forward * step in/step into * step-in * step out ** (military) To increase the length, but not the rapidity, of the step, extending it to thirty-tree inches ** To go out for a short distance or a short time * step short (military) (to diminish the length or rapidity of the step according to the established rules) * step off (to measure by steps, or paces; hence, to divide, as a space, or to form a series of marks, by successive measurements, as with dividers) * step up

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • An advance or movement made from one foot to the other; a pace.
  • *
  • *:Turning back, then, toward the basement staircase, she began to grope her way through blinding darkness, but had taken only a few uncertain steps when, of a sudden, she stopped short and for a little stood like a stricken thing, quite motionless save that she quaked to her very marrow in the grasp of a great and enervating fear.
  • A rest, or one of a set of rests, for the foot in ascending or descending, as a stair, or a rung of a ladder.
  • *Sir (Henry Wotton) (1568-1639)
  • *:The breadth of every single step or stair should be never less than one foot.
  • *
  • , title=(The Celebrity), chapter=4 , passage=One morning I had been driven to the precarious refuge afforded by the steps of the inn, after rejecting offers from the Celebrity to join him in a variety of amusements. But even here I was not free from interruption, for he was seated on a horse-block below me, playing with a fox terrier.}}
  • A running board where passengers step to get on and off the bus.
  • :
  • The space passed over by one movement of the foot in walking or running. Used also figuratively of any kind of progress.
  • :
  • *(Isaac Newton) (1642-1727)
  • *:To derive two or three general principles of motion from phenomena, and afterwards to tell us how the properties and actions of all corporeal things follow from those manifest principles, would be a very great step in philosophy.
  • A small space or distance.
  • :
  • A print of the foot; a footstep; a footprint; track.
  • A gait; manner of walking.
  • :
  • *1900 , , (The House Behind the Cedars) , Chapter I,
  • *:Warwick passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step .
  • Proceeding; measure; action; act.
  • *(Alexander Pope) (1688-1744)
  • *:The reputation of a man depends on the first steps he makes in the world.
  • *(William Cowper) (1731-1800)
  • *:Beware of desperate steps . The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.
  • *(George Washington Cable) (1844-1925)
  • *:I have lately taken steps to relieve the old gentleman's distresses.
  • (lb) A walk; passage.
  • *(John Dryden)
  • *:Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree.
  • (lb) A portable framework of stairs, much used indoors in reaching to a high position.
  • (lb) A framing in wood or iron which is intended to receive an upright shaft; specif., a block of wood, or a solid platform upon the keelson, supporting the heel of the mast.
  • (lb) One of a series of offsets, or parts, resembling the steps of stairs, as one of the series of parts of a cone pulley on which the belt runs.
  • (lb) A bearing in which the lower extremity of a spindle or a vertical shaft revolves.
  • (lb) The interval between two contiguous degrees of the scale.
  • :Usage note: The word tone is often used as the name of this interval; but there is evident incongruity in using tone for indicating the interval between tones. As the word scale is derived from the Italian scala , a ladder, the intervals may well be called steps.
  • (lb) A change of position effected by a motion of translation.
  • :(William Kingdon Clifford)
  • Synonyms

    * stride

    Derived terms

    (Terms derived from the noun "step") * in step * out of step * step by step * stepwise * Back step', ' Half step , etc. See under back, half, etc. * Step grate : a form of grate for holding fuel, in which the bars rise above one another in the manner of steps. * To take steps : to take action; to move in a matter. * one step at a time: slowly and cautiously

    See also

    * step-

    Statistics

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    Anagrams

    * * * 1000 English basic words ----