Word.ws English Dictionary

beating one's meat

beating one's meat is the present participle and gerund of beat one's meat.

Meaning of beat one's meat

Verb

beat one's meat (third-person singular simple present beats one's meat, present participle beating one's meat, simple past beat one's meat, past participle beaten one's meat or beat one's meat)

  1. (euphemistic, slang, vulgar) To masturbate manually by stroking or rubbing one's penis.
    • I beat my meat instead of having intercourse.1948, Psychiatric quarterly (New York State Dept. of Mental Hygiene), volume 22, page 243
    Synonyms:
    masturbate
  2. (broadly, slang, vulgar) To waste time; to engage in an unproductive activity.
    • He had had the theory that all this space stuff was just the Soviet Union beating its meat, shooting off into space. Other than that he couldn't imagine the slightest use for it all. Space was, after all, space — with nothing in it.1991, William Barton, Michael Capobianco, Fellow Traveler, Spectra, →ISBN

Questions about beating one's meat

What is beating one's meat the present participle and gerund of?
Beating one's meat is the present participle and gerund of beat one's meat.

Words near beating one's meat in the dictionary

  1. beating one's brains out
  2. beating one's breast
  3. beating one's chest
  4. beating one's face
  5. beating one's head against a stone wall
  6. beating one's meat
  7. beating one's swords into ploughshares
  8. beating one's swords into plowshares
  9. beating out
  10. beating someone at their own game
  11. beating someone round the ears

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: beating one's meat (page history and authors); beat one's meat (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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