different between confound vs beat

English

Etymology

From Middle English confounden (“destroy, ruin, perplex”), from Anglo-Norman cunfundre and Old French confondre, from Latin confund? (“to mingle, mix together”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /k?n?fa?nd/

• Rhymes: -a?nd

• Hyphenation: con?found

Verb

confound (third-person singular simple present confounds, present participle confounding, simple past and past participle confounded)

1. To perplex or puzzle.

   Synonym: puzzle

   • 1830, Joseph Smith, Jr., Book of Mormon: Ether, i, 34,

     And the brother of Jared being a large and mighty man, and a man highly favored of the Lord, Jared, his brother, said unto him: Cry unto the Lord, that he will not confound us that we may not understand our words.
2. To stun or amaze.
3. To fail to see the difference; to mix up; to confuse right and wrong.

   Synonyms: confuse, mix up

   • 1651 (Latin edition 1642), Thomas Hobbes, De Cive (Latin title) Philosophicall Rudiments Concerning Government and Society (English),

     Hey who lesse seriously consider the force of words, doe sometimes confound Law with Counsell, sometimes with Covenant, sometimes with Right. They confound Law with Counsell, who think, that it is the duty of Monarchs not onely to give ear to their Counsellours, but also to obey them, as though it were in vaine to take Counsell, unlesse it were also followed.

4. (sometimes proscribed) To make something worse.
   • 1983, Carol M. Anderson, Susan Stewart, Mastering Resistance: A Practical Guide to Family Therapy,

     While she had obeyed him, smiling sweetly all the time, she had nursed a growing resentment of what she called his "Latin American macho attitude." To confound the problem, his mother, who lived with them on and off, was described by the wife as being as domineering as her son.

5. To combine in a confused fashion; to mingle so as to make the parts indistinguishable.
6. To cause to be ashamed; to abash.

7. To defeat, to frustrate, to thwart.
   • 1848 February 12, John Mitchel, The United Irishman, Letter to Lord Clarendon,

     I am now, in order the better to confound your politics, going to give you a true account of the means we intend to use, and of the rules, signs, and pass-words of our new United Irish Society Lodge A. 1.—They are so simple that you will never believe them.

8. (dated) To damn (a mild oath).
   • 1882, Arthur Conan Doyle, My Friend the Murderer in The Gully of Bluemansdyke and Other Stories,

     "Number 43 is no better, Doctor," said the head-warder, in a slightly reproachful accent, looking in round the corner of my door.

     "Confound 43!" I responded from behind the pages of the Australian Sketcher.

   • 1877, Anna Sewell, Black Beauty Chapter 23[3]

     "Confound these bearing reins!" he said to himself; "I thought we should have some mischief soon—master will be sorely vexed;

9. (archaic) To destroy, ruin, or devastate; to bring to ruination.

Translations

Noun

confound (plural confounds)

1. (statistics) A confounding variable.

   Synonym: confounder

   • 2009, C. James Goodwin, Research In Psychology: Methods and Design, John Wiley & Sons (?ISBN), page 175:

     The participants certainly differ in how their practice is distributed (1, 2, or 3 days), but they also differ in how much total practice they get (3, 6, or 9 hours). This is a perfect example of a confound—it is impossible to tell if the results are due to one factor (distribution of practice) or the other (total practice hours); the two factors covary perfectly.

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: b?t, IPA^(key): /bi?t/
• Homophone: beet
• Rhymes: -i?t

Etymology 1

From Middle English beten, from Old English b?atan (“to beat, pound, strike, lash, dash, thrust, hurt, injure”), from Proto-West Germanic *bautan, from Proto-Germanic *bautan? (“to push, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European *b?ewd- (“to hit, strike”).

Compare Old Irish fo·botha (“he threatened”), Latin confut? (“I strike down”), f?stis (“stick, club”), Albanian bahe (“sling”), Lithuanian baudžiù, Old Armenian ???? (but?)).

Noun

beat (plural beats)

1. A stroke; a blow.

   • He, […] with a careless beat, / Struck out the mute creation at a heat.

2. A pulsation or throb.

3. (music) A pulse on the beat level, the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic unit. Thus a beat is the basic time unit of a piece.
4. A rhythm.
   1. (music) The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians.
5. The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music.
6. The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency
7. (authorship) A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect; a plot point or story development.
8. (by extension) An area of a person's responsibility, especially
   1. The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard.
   2. (journalism) The primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.).
      • 2020 April, Elizabeth Kolbert, Why we won't avoid a climate catastrophe[2], National Geographic

        As an adult, I became a journalist whose beat is the environment. In a way, I’ve turned my youthful preoccupations into a profession.

9. (dated) An act of reporting news or scientific results before a rival; a scoop.
   • 1898, unknown author, Scribner's Magazine Volume 24

     It's a beat on the whole country.

10. (colloquial, dated) That which beats, or surpasses, another or others.

11. (dated or obsolete, Southern US) A precinct.
12. (dated) A place of habitual or frequent resort.
    1. (Australia) An area frequented by gay men in search of sexual activity. See gay beat.
13. (archaic) A low cheat or swindler.

14. (hunting) The act of scouring, or ranging over, a tract of land to rouse or drive out game; also, those so engaged, collectively.
    • 1911, Hedley Peek and Frederick George Aflalo, Encyclopaedia of Sport

      Bears coming out of holes in the rocks at the last moment, when the beat is close to them.

15. (fencing) A smart tap on the adversary's blade.
16. (slang) A makeup look; compare beat one's face.

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Pennsylvania German: biede

Translations

See also

• (piece of hip-hop music): track

Verb

beat (third-person singular simple present beats, present participle beating, simple past beat, past participle beaten or beat)

1. (transitive) To hit; strike

   Synonyms: knock, pound, strike, hammer, whack; see also Thesaurus:attack, Thesaurus:hit
2. (transitive) To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm.

3. (intransitive) To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly.
4. (intransitive) To move with pulsation or throbbing.
5. (transitive) To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than; to excel (someone) in a particular, competitive event.
6. (intransitive, nautical) To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind.
7. (transitive) To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting.
8. To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip.

9. (transitive, Britain, In haggling for a price) of a buyer, to persuade the seller to reduce a price

   Synonym: negotiate

10. (transitive) To indicate by beating or drumming.

11. To tread, as a path.
12. To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble.
13. To be in agitation or doubt.
14. To make a sound when struck.

15. (military, intransitive) To make a succession of strokes on a drum.

16. To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and less intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; said of instruments, tones, or vibrations, not perfectly in unison.
17. (transitive) To arrive at a place before someone.

18. (intransitive, Britain, slang, vulgar) To have sexual intercourse.

    Synonyms: do it, get it on, have sex, shag; see also Thesaurus:copulate

19. (transitive, slang) To rob.

Conjugation

Derived terms

Translations

Adjective

beat (comparative more beat, superlative most beat)

1. (US slang) exhausted

2. dilapidated, beat up

3. (African-American Vernacular and gay slang) Having impressively attractive makeup

4. (slang) boring
5. (slang, of a person) ugly

Synonyms

• (exhausted): See also Thesaurus:fatigued
• (dilapidated): See also Thesaurus:ramshackle
• (boring): See also Thesaurus:boring
• (ugly): See also Thesaurus:ugly

Translations

Etymology 2

From beatnik

Noun

beat (plural beats)

1. A beatnik.
   • 2008, David Wills, Beatdom, Issue Three, March 2008

     The beats were pioneers with no destination, changing the world one impulse at a time.

Derived terms

• beat generation

References

• DeLone et. al. (Eds.) (1975). Aspects of Twentieth-Century Music. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. ?ISBN.

Anagrams

• Bate, Beta, Teba, abet, bate, beta

Catalan

Etymology

From Latin be?tus.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central, Valencian) IPA^(key): /be?at/
• Rhymes: -at

Adjective

beat (feminine beata, masculine plural beats, feminine plural beates)

1. saint, beatified

Derived terms

• beateria

Noun

beat m (plural beats)

1. monk

Related terms

• beatífic

Further reading

• “beat” in Diccionari de la llengua catalana, segona edició, Institut d’Estudis Catalans.
• “beat” in Gran Diccionari de la Llengua Catalana, Grup Enciclopèdia Catalana.
• “beat” in Diccionari normatiu valencià, Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua.
• “beat” in Diccionari català-valencià-balear, Antoni Maria Alcover and Francesc de Borja Moll, 1962.

Dutch

Etymology

Borrowed from English beat.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bit/
• Hyphenation: beat
• Rhymes: -it
• Homophones: bied, biedt, biet

Noun

beat m (plural beats, diminutive beatje n)

1. A beat, a rhythmic pattern, notably in music
2. (music) beat an early rock genre.

Derived terms

• beatmis
• beatmuziek

Anagrams

• bate

Finnish

Etymology

Borrowed from English beat.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bi?t/, [?bi?t?]

Noun

beat

1. (music) beat

Declension

Synonyms

• biitti

Italian

Etymology

Borrowed from English beat.

Adjective

beat (invariable)

1. beat (50s US literary and 70s UK music scenes)

Noun

beat m (invariable)

1. beat (rhythm accompanying music)

Anagrams

• beta

Latin

Verb

beat

1. third-person singular present active indicative of be?

Romanian

Etymology

From Late Latin bibitus (“drunk”), from Latin bib? (“drink”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [be?at]

Adjective

beat m or n (feminine singular beat?, masculine plural be?i, feminine and neuter plural bete)

1. drunk, drunken, intoxicated; tipsy

Declension

Synonyms

• îmb?tat
• b?ut

Antonyms

• treaz

Derived terms

• be?ie

Related terms

• bea
• be?iv
• îmb?ta

Volapük

Noun

beat (nominative plural beats)

1. happiness

Declension