pulse

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The rhythmical throbbing of arteries produced by the regular contractions of the heart, especially as palpated at the wrist or in the neck.
2. n. A regular or rhythmical beating.
3. n. A single beat or throb.
4. n. Physics A brief sudden change in a normally constant quantity: a pulse of current; a pulse of radiation.
5. n. Physics Any of a series of intermittent occurrences characterized by a brief sudden change in a quantity.
6. n. The perceptible emotions or sentiments of a group of people: "a man who had . . . his finger on the pulse of America” ( Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr.)
7. v. To pulsate; beat: "The nation pulsed with music and proclamation, with rages and moral pretensions” ( Lance Morrow).
8. v. Physics To undergo a series of intermittent occurrences characterized by brief, sudden changes in a quantity.
9. idiom. take the pulse of To judge the mood or views of (a political electorate, for example): The politician was able to take the pulse of the grass-roots voters.
10. n. The edible seeds of certain pod-bearing plants, such as peas and beans.
11. n. A plant yielding these seeds.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A beat; a stroke; especially, a measured, regular, or rhythmical beat; a short, quick motion regularly repeated, as in a medium of the transmission of light, sound, etc.; a pulsation; a vibration.
2. n. Specifically, in physiology, the series of rhythmically recurring maxima of fluid tension in any blood-vessel, consequent on the contractions of the heart. These may be perceived by palpation, and recorded by the sphygmograph, and often produce a visible effect in dilating the vessel, or causing a lateral movement of it. The pulse is for the most part confined to the arteries, but a venous pulse occurs (see below). There is one arterial pulse for each ventricular systole; but in disease a ventricular systole may be too feeble to produce a sensible pulsation in a distant artery, as at the wrist, or again each pulsation may be double. (See dicrotic pulse.) The features of the pulse are the times between successive pulsations, the maxima and minima of pressure, and the way in which the tension changes from maximum to minimum and to maximum again, represented in the form of the sphygmographic tracing. The normal pulse exhibits approximately equal and equidistant maxima, the rate being in adults between 70 and 80 (see pulse-rate); the rise of pressure is sharp, the fall slow with only a slight dicrotic wave; the extent of change (amplitude) is not excessive; and the tension of the blood in the vessel is neither too high nor too low. As taken with Basch's sphygonomanometer, the radial (maximum) tension in health usually lies between 135 and 165 millimeters mercury.
3. n. In music, same as beat or accent.
4. n. Figuratively, feeling; sentiment; general opinion, drift, tendency, or movement, private or public: as, the pulse of an occasion; the pulse of the community.
5. n. A frequent pulse.
6. n. An infrequent pulse.
7. To drive.
8. To drive by a pulsation of the heart.
9. To beat, as the arteries or heart.
10. n. The esculent seeds of leguminous plants cultivated as field or garden crops, as peas, beans, lentils, etc.
11. n. One of the plants producing pulse.
12. n. In physical, a proposed unit for the measurement of the time-integral of forces.

Wiktionary

1. n. Any annual legume yielding from 1 to 12 grains or seeds of variable size, shape and colour within a pod, and used as food for humans or animals.
2. n. physiology A normally regular beat felt when arteries are depressed, caused by the pumping action of the heart.
3. n. A beat or throb.
4. n. music The beat or tactus of a piece of music.
5. v. to beat, to throb, to flash.
6. v. to flow, particularly of blood.
7. v. to emit in discrete quantities

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Leguminous plants, or their seeds, as beans, pease, etc.
2. n. (Physiol.) The beating or throbbing of the heart or blood vessels, especially of the arteries.
3. n. Any measured or regular beat; any short, quick motion, regularly repeated, as of a medium in the transmission of light, sound, etc.; oscillation; vibration; pulsation; impulse; beat; movement.
4. v. To beat, as the arteries; to move in pulses or beats; to pulsate; to throb.
5. v. rare To drive by a pulsation; to cause to pulsate.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. (electronics) a sharp transient wave in the normal electrical state (or a series of such transients)
2. n. the rate at which the heart beats; usually measured to obtain a quick evaluation of a person's health
3. n. edible seeds of various pod-bearing plants (peas or beans or lentils etc.)
4. v. produce or modulate (as electromagnetic waves) in the form of short bursts or pulses or cause an apparatus to produce pulses
5. n. the rhythmic contraction and expansion of the arteries with each beat of the heart
6. v. drive by or as if by pulsation
7. v. expand and contract rhythmically; beat rhythmically