beating

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. An act of repeated hitting or striking.
2. n. A sound defeat.
3. n. A sharp reversal; a setback: Stocks took a beating from panicky investors.
4. n. A throbbing or pulsation, as of the heart.
5. n. Physics The periodic variation in amplitude of a wave produced by the superposition of two waves of different frequencies, resulting in segments of louder, and then quieter, sound.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of striking, or operating by blows; any process of working by percussion. Specifically— A process in the dressing of flax and hemp by which they are made soft and pliable. The process of hammering gold and silver into leaf. The sheets are placed between pieces of parchment, and hammered on a marble block. In bookbinding, the process of flatting out with a hammer the leaves of a book which have been badly pressed, or which have been buckled or twisted by bad sewing or uneven dampening.
2. n. Punishment or chastisement by blows; a flogging.
3. n. The state of being beaten or out-done; a defeat.
4. n. Regular pulsation or throbbing.
5. n. In music, same as beat, 7 : but in this form more frequently applied to the beats of the strings of a piano or the pipes of an organ.
6. n. Nautical, the act of advancing in a zigzag line against the wind.

Wiktionary

1. n. action of the verb to beat
2. n. a heavy defeat or setback
3. n. the pulsation of the heart
4. v. present participle of beat.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of striking or giving blows; punishment or chastisement by blows.
2. n. Pulsation; throbbing.
3. n. (Acoustics & Mus.) Pulsative sounds. See Beat, n.
4. n. (Naut.) The process of sailing against the wind by tacks in zigzag direction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows
2. n. the act of overcoming or outdoing