Word.ws English Dictionary

beat to

beat to verb: to arrive (somewhere) more quickly (than someone else); to succeed (at something) more quickly (than someone else).

Verb

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

  1. (transitive) To arrive (somewhere) more quickly (than someone else); to succeed (at something) more quickly (than someone else).
    • Zumbetel wanted to beat Yalpatel to launching the planet's first pocket-sized satellite phone.
    • I wanted to gather up all the pinecones, but you beat me to it!

Forms of beat to

third-person singular presentbeats to
present participlebeating to
pastbeat to
past participlebeaten to

Origin of beat to

Shortening of beat to the punch.

Questions about beat to

What does beat to mean?
Beat to means to arrive (somewhere) more quickly (than someone else); to succeed (at something) more quickly (than someone else).
What part of speech is beat to?
Beat to is a verb.
What is the past tense of beat to?
The past tense of beat to is beat to.

Words near beat to in the dictionary

  1. beat the stuffing out of
  2. beat the system
  3. beat the tar out of
  4. beat the wing
  5. beat time
  6. beat to
  7. beat to a pulp
  8. beat to quarters
  9. beat to the punch
  10. beat up
  11. beat up on

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beat to (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 to.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beat_to. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.