Word.ws English Dictionary

on the beat

on the beat prepositional phrase: of a police officer: patrolling his or her assigned area; on duty.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Of a police officer: patrolling his or her assigned area; on duty.
    • bobby on the beat
    • From midsize departments like the one in Indianapolis to big-city forces like New York City's, from top commanders to officers on the beat, police officers nationwide were unprepared to calm the summer's unrest, and their approaches consistently did the opposite.2021 March 20, Kim Barker, Mike Baker, Ali Watkins, “In City After City, Police Completely Mishandled Black Lives Matter Protests”, in The New York Times
  2. (euphemistic, slang) Synonym of on the game (“working as a prostitute”).
    • Well if she did blend in, she easily looked like the oldest prostitute on the beat.2020, Mark Hughes, A Greater Passion: Lessons on Living Large in Life and Love
    Synonyms:
    on the game
  3. In the correct rhythm or tempo

Synonyms of on the beat

Questions about on the beat

What does on the beat mean?
On the beat means of a police officer: patrolling his or her assigned area; on duty.
What part of speech is on the beat?
On the beat is a prepositional phrase.

Words near on the beat in the dictionary

  1. on the ball
  2. on the bash
  3. on the basis of
  4. on the batter
  5. on the beach
  6. on the beat
  7. on the bench
  8. on the bias
  9. on the blanket
  10. on the blink
  11. on the blob

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: on the 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: “on the beat.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/on_the_beat. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.