pulse
/pʌls/ noun B2- A normally regular beat felt when arteries near the skin (for example, at the neck or wrist) are depressed, caused by the heart pumping blood through them; the qualitative nature of this beat. · Her pulse was thready and weak.
- The rate of this beat as an indication of a person's health. · Her pulse was 110 at 8 a.m.
- A beat or throb; also, a repeated sequence of such beats or throbs.
- The focus of energy or vigour of an activity, place, or thing; also, the feeling of bustle, busyness, or energy in a place; the heartbeat. · You can really feel the pulse of the city in this district.
- An (increased) amount of a substance (such as a drug or an isotopic label) given over a short time.
- A setting on a food processor which causes it to work in a series of short bursts rather than continuously, in order to break up ingredients without liquidizing them; also, a use of this setting.
- The beat or tactus of a piece of music or verse; also, a repeated sequence of such beats.
- A brief burst of electromagnetic energy, such as light, radio waves, etc.
Plural pulses
From the library
“No, indeed,—I am calm,” said Morrel, giving his hand to the count; “my pulse does not beat slower or faster than usual.
A FOX invited a Crane to supper and provided nothing for his entertainment but some soup made of pulse, which was poured out into a broad flat stone dish.
Rachel came, wandering at her own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with such evident enjoyment that Marilla thought even grippe must bring its compensations.
She probably imagined that she was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a mirrorlike wood pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the gray sod.
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