Definitions

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

  • intransitive verb To expand and contract rhythmically.
  • intransitive verb To produce rhythmic sounds or other vibrations.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To beat or throb, as the heart or a blood-vessel; contract and dilate in alternation or rhythmically, as the heart in systole and diastole, the disk of a jellyfish in swimming, the vacuoles in some protozoans, etc.

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

  • intransitive verb To throb, as a pulse; to beat, as the heart.

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

  • verb To expand and contract rhythmically; to throb or to beat.
  • verb To quiver, vibrate, thrill.
  • verb To produce a recurring increase and decrease of some quantity.

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

  • verb expand and contract rhythmically; beat rhythmically
  • verb produce or modulate (as electromagnetic waves) in the form of short bursts or pulses or cause an apparatus to produce pulses
  • verb move with or as if with a regular alternating motion

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin pulsāre, pulsāt-, frequentative of pellere, to beat; see pel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin pulsātiō ("repeated striking"), from pulsō ("strike repeatedly"), from pellō ("strike")

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