Word.ws English Dictionary

beat to the punch

beat to the punch verb: to carry out an action before another person is able to do so.

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To carry out an action before another person is able to do so.
    • I was planning to take care of the problem for him, but he beat me to the punch and did it himself.

Forms of beat to the punch

third-person singular presentbeats to the punch
present participlebeating to the punch
pastbeat to the punch
past participlebeaten to the punch
past participlebeat to the punch

Questions about beat to the punch

What does beat to the punch mean?
Beat to the punch means to carry out an action before another person is able to do so.
What part of speech is beat to the punch?
Beat to the punch is a verb.
What is the past tense of beat to the punch?
The past tense of beat to the punch is beat to the punch.

Words near beat to the punch in the dictionary

  1. beat the wing
  2. beat time
  3. beat to
  4. beat to a pulp
  5. beat to quarters
  6. beat to the punch
  7. beat up
  8. beat up on
  9. beat up someone's quarters
  10. beat ups
  11. beat with the ugly stick

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beat to the punch (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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