beastlyt (bestli)

[ Fie on her! see how beastly she doth court him. Shak., T. of the S., iv. 2. I have seen a handsome cause so foully lost, sir, So beastly cast away, for want of witne es. Fletcher , Spanish Curate, iii. 1. beastlyheadt (bēst'li-hed), n. [ beastly + -head - hood ; one of Spenser's artificial words.] The character or quality of a beast; beastline : used by Spenser as a greeting to a beast. Sicke, sicke, alas! and little lack of dead, But I be relieved by your beastly head. Spenser, Shep. Cal., May. beast's-bane (bēsts'bān), n. A variety of the wolf's-bane, Aconitum Lycoctonum. beat beat1 (bēt), v.; pret. beat, pp. beaten, beat, ppr. beating. [ME. beten, H'as beat me twice, and beat me to a coward. Fletcher, Humorous Lieutenant, ii. 4. Whittier , The Crisis. The eagles of Mexitli shall beat the air no more. 2. To strike in order to produce a sound; sound by percu ion: as, to beat a drum or a tambourine. Come, beat all the drums up, And all the noble instruments of war. Fletcher, Humorous Lieutenant, v. 5. 3. To play (a particular call or tattoo) upon the drum: as, to beat a charge; to beat a retreat. [The last phrase often means simply to retire or retreat.] The enemy was driven back all day, as we had been the day before, until finally he beat a precipitate retreat. U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs, I. 350. 4. To break, bruise, comminute, or pulverize by beating or pounding, as any hard substance. Thou shalt beat some of it very small. Ex. xxx. 36. 5. To extend by beating, as gold or other malleable substance, or to hammer into any form; forge. They did beat the gold into thin plates. Ex. xxxix. 3. The hammer which smote the Saracens at Tours was at last succe ful in beating the Netherlands into Christianity. Motley, Dutch Republic, I. 21. 6. To separate by concu ion; strike apart; remove by striking or threshing: with out. So she beat out that she had gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley. Ruth ii. 17. IMG:content-1810.png:[blocks in formation] 9. To strike with the feet in moving; tread upon. Pa awful gulfs and beat my painful way. Sir R. Black more, Along the margin of the moonlight sea We beat with thundering hoofs the level sand. Words worth, Prelude, x. Amid the sound of steps that beat The murmuring walks like autumn rain. Bryant, The Crowded Street. 10. To range (fields or woods) with loud blows or other noise in search of game. To beat the woods and rouse the bounding prey. Prior . Together let us beat this simple field, Try what the open, what the covert yield! Pope, E ay on Man, i. 9. 11. To overcome in battle, contest, or strife; vanquish or conquer: as, one beats another at play. Pyrrhus.. beat the Cart hag in i ans at sea. Arbuthnot . 12. To surpa ; excel; go beyond: as, he beats them all at swimming. [Colloq.] Many ladies in Strasburg were beautiful, still They were beat all to sticks by the lovely Odille. Barham, In golds by Legends, I. 239. There is something out of common here that beats anything that ever came in my way. Dickens . 13. To be difficult for, whether intellectu 493 an unfair advantage of; defraud: as, to beat a hotel. [Slang, U. S.] To beat a bargain. See bargain. - To beat a parley, to notify the enemy by a drum or trumpet signal that conference is desired under a flag of truce. To beat away, in mining, to excavate: usually applied to hard ground. To beat back, to compel to retire or return.- To beat cock-fighting. See cock - fighting.- To beat down. (a) To break, destroy, or throw down by beating or battering, as a wall. ( b ) Το pre down or lay flat (gra , grain, etc.) by any prostrating action, as that of a violent wind, a current of water, or the pa age of persons or animals. (c) To cause to lower (a price) by importunity or argument; sink or le en the price or value of; make lower, as price or value. It [usury] beats down the price of land. Bacon , Usury. (d) To depre or crush: as, to beat down opposition. To beat into, teach or instil by repetition instruction. - To beat off, to repel or drive back. To beat out. (a) To extend by hammering; hence, figuratively, to work out fully; amplify; expand. A man thinking on his legs is obliged to beat out his thought for his own sake, if not for the sake of his hearers. Corn hill Mag. (6) To perform or execute, as a piece of music, by or as if by beats with the hands or feet. The child's feet were busy beating out the tune. Corn hill Mag. Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds, At last he beat his music out . (c) To drive out or away. Tennyson, In Memoriam, xcvi. Intermediate varieties, from existing in le er numbers than the forms which they connect, will generally be beaten out and exterminated during the course of further modification and improvement. Darwin , Origin of Species, p. 266. To beat the air, to fight to no purpose, or against no antagonist or opposition. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air. 1 Cor. ix. 26. To beat the bounds. See bound1. To beat the dust, in the manège: (a) To take in too little ground with the fore legs, as a horse. (b) To curvet too precipitately or too low, as a horse. To beat the general, to sound the roll of the drum which calls the troops together. - To beat the tattoo, to sound the drum for evening roll-call, when all soldiers except those absent with permi ion are expected to be present in their quarters. - To beat the wind, to make a few flourishes in the air, and thus be entitled to all the advantages of a victor, as was done under the medieval system of trial by battle when the other combatant failed to appear. To beat time, to measure or regulate time in music by the motion of the hand or foot. To beat to a mummy. See mummy.To beat up. (a) To attack suddenly; alarm or disturb; hence, to come to or upon unexpectedly: as, to beat up an enemy's quarters. A distant relation left him an estate in Ireland, where he had resided ever since, making occasional visits to the Continent and beating up his old quarters, but rarely coming to England. Lawrence. (b) To summon or bring together as by beat of drum: as, to beat up recruits. (c) In hunting, to rouse and drive (game) by ranging. They beat up a little game peradventure. Lamb, Imperfect Sympathies. (d) In engraving, to remove (a dent or mark) from the face of a plate by striking the back with a punch while the face rests on a sheet of tin-foil on an anvil or a stake. In this way engravers can remove marks too deep to be obliterated by the scraper or burnisher. Syn. 1. To pound, bang, buffet, maul, drub, thump, thwack, baste, thrash, pommel.-11. Discomfit, Rout, etc. See defeat. II. in trans. 1. To strike repeatedly; knock, as at a door. The men of the city... beat at the door. Judges xix. 22. 2. To move with pulsation; throb: as, the pulse beats . A you sand hearts beat happily. Byron, Childe Harold, iii. 21. With unused thoughts and sweet And hurrying hopes, his heart began to beat. William Morris , Earthly Paradise, I. 408. IMG:content-1811.png:[blocks in formation] 8. Naut., to make progre against the wind by alternate tacks in a zigzag line. A good square-rigged ve el will make a direct gain to windward of three tenths of the distance she has sailed while beating, while the gain to windward of an average fore-and-aft rigged ve el will be equal to five or six tenths of the distance sailed. We took a pilot on board, hove up our anchor, and began beating down the bay. R. H. Dana, Jr. , Before the Mast, p. 3. Many yachtsmen had pronounced it to be an impo ibility for our ve el to beat out in so light a breeze. Lady Bra ey , Voyage of Sunbeam, I. i. To beat about, to search by various means or ways; make efforts at discovery. To find an honest man, I beat about . Pope, Epil. to Satires, ii. 102. To beat about the bush, to approach a matter in a roundabout or circumlocutory way. To beat to quarters, to summon the crew of a man-of-war by beat of drum to their stations for battle. To beat up and down, in hunting, to run first one way and then another: said of a stag. To beat up for recruits or soldiers, to go about to enlist men into the army: a phrase originating in the fact that a recruiting party was often preceded by a drummer with his instrument. - To beat upont, to enforce by repetition; reiterate. lake will. How frequently and fervently doth the Scripture beat upon this cause. beatl (bet), n. [ The Smith Divine, as with a carele beat , Struck out the mute creation at a heat. Dryden, Hind and Panther, i. 253. Thus we get but years and beats. Fletcher, Val ent in i an, ii. 3. 2. A recurrent stroke; a pulsation; a throb: as, the beat of the pulse; the heart makes from sixty to seventy beats a minute.-3. The sound made by the foot in walking or running; a footfall. IMG:content-1812.png:[blocks in formation] Hence - 5. A course habitually traversed, or a place to which one habitually or frequently resorts.-6. In Alabama and Mi i ippi, the principal subdivision of a county; a voting-precinct.-7. In music: (a) The beating or pulsation arising from the interference of two musical notes differing but slightly in pitch. See interference. The number of beats per second is equal to the difference between the numbers of vibrations of the two notes. Thus, two notes having 256 and 255 vibrations per second respectively, if sounded simultaneously, will give rise to one beat each second, because once in each second the two wave-systems (see sound ) will coincide and produce a maximum sound, and once they will be half a wave-length apart, and the sound will almost disappear. Also called beating. (b) The motion of the hand, foot, or baton in marking the divisions of time during the performance of a piece of music. (c) Used vaguely by various English writers to denote different kinds of ornamental notes or graces.-8. The third operation in paper-making, in which the pulp is still further divided and torn apart in the beating-engine. -9. The blow struck by a valve when falling into its seat.-10. The bearing part or the make it out. [Colloq.]-14. To hara ; exercise severely; cudgel (one's brains). Sirrah, lay by your foolish study there, And beat your brains about your own affairs. Fletcher and Rowley , Maid in the Mill, ii. 1. Why should any one beat his head about the Latin grammar who does not intend to be a critic? Locke . as a storm, flood, pa ion, etc.: as, the tempest beats against the house. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die. Jonah iv. 8. Rolling tempests vainly beat below. Dryden. For the noon is coming on, and the sunbeams fiercely beat . Bryant , Damsel of Peru. IMG:content-1813.png:[blocks in formation] lently or frequently. Floating corps lie beating on the shore. Add is on . The inlet and outlet valves in the covers of the air-cylinders are of bra provided with leather beats . Ure, Dict., IV. 740. 11. A worthle , dishonest, shiftle fellow; a knave. [Slang.] - Beat of a watch or clock, the stroke made by the action of the escapement. A clock is said to be in beat or out of beat according as the stroke is at equal or unequal intervals. - Beat or tuck of drum ( mil it.), a succe ion of strokes on a drum, varied in differ. ent ways for particular purposes, as regulate a march, to call soldiers to their arms or quarters, to direct an attack or a retreat, etc. - Dead beat. (a) Formerly, a person without money or resources; now, one who never pays, But Linden saw another sight When the drum beat at dead of night. Campbell, Hohenlinden. 6. To contain beats or pulsations of sound, as a tone formed by sounding together two notes which are nearly in unison. See beat, n., 7.-7. To ponder; be ince antly engaged; be anxiously directed to something; be in agitation or doubt. If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell, And there repose; a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind. Shak ., Tempest, iv. 1. low: an intensified expre ion of beat, 11, above. [Slang.] (b) A stroke or blow without recoil, as in the dead-beat escapement. See escapement. - Double beat, in music, a beat repeated. Out of one's beat, not in one's sphere or department. [Colloq.] beat1 (bēt), pp. [Shorter form of beaten, which is the only form used attributively.] Exhausted by exertion, mentally or bodily; fatigued; worn out by toil. [Colloq.] Quite beat and very much vexed. Dickens . Dead beat, completely exhausted or worn out, so as to be incapable of further exertion; utterly baffled, as by the difficulty of a task; thoroughly defeated in a contest or struggle. [Colloq.] beat