Word.ws English Dictionary

pound a beat

pound a beat verb: of a police officer, to walk a regular route.

Verb

pound a beat (third-person singular simple present pounds a beat, present participle pounding a beat, simple past and past participle pounded a beat)

  1. (idiomatic) Of a police officer, to walk a regular route.
    • Assigned to the riverfront precinct for years, he pounded a beat of backstreets and dockyards.
    • Flat feet may be important to the patrolman who must pound a beat, but in cities with patrol cars, should mild cases of flat feet disqualify?1948, Alfred Haines Cope, The administration of civil service in cities of the third class in Pennsylvania, page 65
  2. (idiomatic) Of a journalist, to cover a regular beat, reporting on an assigned category of news.
    • Assigned to the city desk for years, she pounded a beat of city council and mayoral activity, police blotters, and the like.

Forms of pound a beat

third-person singular presentpounds a beat
present participlepounding a beat
past participlepounded a beat
pastpounded a beat

Questions about pound a beat

What does pound a beat mean?
Pound a beat means of a police officer, to walk a regular route.
What part of speech is pound a beat?
Pound a beat is a verb.
What is the past tense of pound a beat?
The past tense of pound a beat is pounded a beat.

Words near pound a beat in the dictionary

  1. pouncingly
  2. pouncings
  3. pouncy
  4. Pouncys
  5. pound
  6. pound a beat
  7. pound cake
  8. pound cakes
  9. Pound Creek
  10. pound dirt
  11. pound for pound

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pound 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-pound a beat.ogg.

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