beating

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun An act of repeated hitting or striking.
• noun A thorough defeat, as in an athletic contest.
• noun A sharp reversal; a setback.
• noun A throbbing or pulsation, as of the heart.
• noun Physics The periodic variation in amplitude of a wave, especially that produced by the superposition of two waves of different frequencies, resulting in segments of more intense and then less intense wave phenomena, such as louder and then quieter sound.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun The act of striking, or operating by blows; any process of working by percussion.
• noun Punishment or chastisement by blows; a flogging.
• noun The state of being beaten or out-done; a defeat.
• noun Regular pulsation or throbbing.
• noun 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.
• noun Nautical, the act of advancing in a zigzag line against the wind.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

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

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun action of the verb to beat
• noun a heavy defeat or setback
• noun the pulsation of the heart
• verb Present participle of beat.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the act of inflicting corporal punishment with repeated blows
• noun the act of overcoming or outdoing