Word.ws English Dictionary

beat the air

beat the air verb: to fight to no purpose, or against an imaginary enemy.

Verb

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

  1. To fight to no purpose, or against an imaginary enemy.

Forms of beat the air

third-person singular presentbeats the air
present participlebeating the air
pastbeat the air
past participlebeaten the air
past participle (colloquial)beat the air

Questions about beat the air

What does beat the air mean?
Beat the air means to fight to no purpose, or against an imaginary enemy.
What part of speech is beat the air?
Beat the air is a verb.
What is the past tense of beat the air?
The past tense of beat the air is beat the air.

Words near beat the air in the dictionary

  1. beat someone round the ears
  2. beat someone's arse
  3. beat someone's ass
  4. beat someone's brains out
  5. beat someone's time
  6. beat the air
  7. beat the allegations
  8. beat the bat
  9. beat the bishop
  10. beat the bounds
  11. beat the bushes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beat the air (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “beat the air.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beat_the_air. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.