Beatan

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Old English verb meaning to strike or hit something repeatedly, the ancestor of the modern English word beat
2. An archaic Old English infinitive for hitting or striking over and over, from which the modern verb to beat descends
3. Old English term for delivering repeated blows, the source of the present-day English verb meaning to strike again and again

Etymology: Old English "beatan" meant "to beat" in the most literal sense: to strike repeatedly, to hammer, to thrash. It is the ancestor of the modern verb, and its forms survive in the past participle "beaten," which kept the older -en ending that most English verbs of its type dropped. Its roots run deep into the Germanic languages, where cognates such as Old Norse "bauta" and Gothic forms with the same sense point to a shared prehistoric verb for pounding or striking. Across that long history the core meaning stayed remarkably steady, which is why the verb still carries the sense of repeated blows. Its extended uses grew out of this: to beat a path (by trampling it down), to beat an opponent, and to beat a drum or a rhythm. Each of these keeps the idea of repeated striking, applied to ground, people, or sound.