Beating

How to spell beating

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce beating

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does beating mean?

1. verbStriking something repeatedly, or pulsing or stirring with rapid motion.
2. nounA heavy defeat, or an act of being struck hard.

Beating in a sentence

• verb

  The rain was beating against the office windows all afternoon.

• noun

  The home side took a real beating in the second half.

• verb

  She felt her heart beating faster as she opened the results.

• noun

  The old suitcase had taken a beating over years of travel.

Where does beating come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb beatan, which simply meant to strike or to thrash, and which goes back to a common Germanic root shared by related words in the older Scandinavian and Continental languages. The bare verb has stayed remarkably stable in form for well over a thousand years, and the -ing ending was added in the ordinary way to make both a present participle (the action of striking) and a noun (an instance of being struck or defeated). Over the centuries the sense broadened well beyond physical blows: a heart can be beating, eggs can be beaten, and a rival team can take a beating in a match. The vowel sound is spelled with the digraph 'ea', a fossil of older English vowel patterns, and that is the one small trap, since the long 'ee' sound is written 'ea' rather than 'ee'. Because the base word is so old and so common, the spelling rarely causes adults real trouble.

How the word is built

• beat (from Old English beatan: to strike)
• -ing (forming a noun or present participle)