heartbeat
Americannoun
-
heartbeats
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of heartbeat
Explanation
That regular thumping in your chest is your heartbeat, the relaxation and contraction of your heart's chambers that sends blood flowing through your body. You may notice your heartbeat after you've been exercising vigorously, or when something really scares you. It's the rhythmic pulse that can be heard through a stethoscope as your heart works to pump your blood. Figuratively, a heartbeat is also a brief, quick moment, as in "It was over in a heartbeat," or something vitally important, as in "She was the heartbeat of our Girl Scout troop." Heartbeat comes from the "repeated strike of a drum" sense of beat.
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.
See Examples For:
Drake Thomas, an Anthropic safety employee, posted on X that he would “burn my equity to the ground in a heartbeat for a 1% higher chance we make it out of this situation alive.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 14, 2026
When I attended pregnancy scans a decade ago, the best the sonographer could do to involve this blind expectant mum was to turn up the volume on the heartbeat.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 2026
The scans also revealed signs that the heart muscle was less able to flex normally during each heartbeat.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 11, 2026
The consequences can include nausea, rapid heartbeat, seizures, loss of consciousness and dangerously high body temperature.
From Salon ● Aug. 30, 2026
Lester told me he’d trade places with you in a heartbeat.
From "The Line Tender" by Kate Allen
The study, published in Autonomic Neuroscience, uncovered a striking left-right difference that may one day improve treatment strategies for irregular heartbeats, chest pain, angina, and stress-induced 'broken-heart' syndrome.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 14, 2026
The native population in the Amazon thinks that because they are fluttering so fast with a thousand heartbeats per minute that they must have more than one life in them.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 16, 2026
If left unchecked, dehydration can cause more serious complications, such as fainting and irregular heartbeats.
From Salon ● Jan. 21, 2025
Getting another ablation procedure, which could help treat irregular heartbeats by destroying tissue that causes abnormal electrical signals, remains an option after the initial monitoring period.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 14, 2024
For a few heartbeats, Werner watches her sleep.
From "All the Light We Cannot See" by Anthony Doerr
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
