Word.ws English Dictionary

miss a beat

miss a beat is the alternative form of skip a beat.

Meaning of skip a beat

Verb

skip a beat (third-person singular simple present skips a beat, present participle skipping a beat, simple past and past participle skipped a beat)

  1. (literally) To miss a beat.
  2. (broadly) To experience a strong emotion.
    • My heart seemed to skip a beat when I parked my car at the old Safeway supermarket. My eyes gaped at the same aisles I had strolled through as a child.1997, David J. Pelzer, The lost boy: a foster child's search for the love of a family
  3. (broadly, idiomatic) To momentarily falter.
    • THE MEGHA HAD BEEN on the water for some three hours when Piya heard the engine skip a beat.2005, Amitav Ghosh, The hungry tide

Forms of miss a beat

third-person singular presentmisses a beat
present participlemissing a beat
past participlemissed a beat
pastmissed a beat

Questions about miss a beat

What is miss a beat the alternative form of?
Miss a beat is the alternative form of skip a beat.

Words near miss a beat in the dictionary

  1. misrung
  2. misrunning
  3. misruns
  4. miss
  5. Miss 'Rona
  6. miss a beat
  7. miss a cog
  8. miss a trick
  9. Miss Ann
  10. Miss Anns
  11. Miss Austenish

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: miss a beat (page history and authors); skip a beat (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: “miss a beat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/miss_a_beat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.