big beat

American

noun

(sometimes initial capital letters)

rhythmic popular music, especially rock-'n'-roll, notable for its prominent and persistent beat.

big beat British

noun

1. an eclectic type of dance music in which heavy beats and samples are layered over the songs or instrumental tracks of other performers or bands
2. ( as modifier )
  
  a big-beat compilation

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Alongside artists like the Chemical Brothers and Death in Vegas, he helped pioneer and popularise the big beat genre, which sits somewhere between hip hop and acid house.

From BBC • May 22, 2026

The big beat was largely driven by the company’s sale of its interest in the Ampere chip company to SoftBank for $2.7 billion, boosting pretax earnings by 91 cents a diluted share.

From Barron's • Dec. 10, 2025

Tesla posted a big beat here in the second quarter.

From MarketWatch • Oct. 15, 2025

"The biggest surprise is the retail sales number, which is really a big beat... I would expect that retail sales could be a jump in the first quarter, and therefore, first-quarter GDP could also rise."

From Reuters • Jan. 17, 2023

He headed for Far Wood, and there they frightened out all the Pheasants, who were sheltering from a big beat across the valley.

From Puck of Pook's Hill by Kipling, Rudyard

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023