Commonly Confused Words Beat and Beet

The words beat and beet are homophones: they sound alike but have different meanings. Definitions As a verb, beat has several meanings, including to hit repeatedly, strike, spank, force, search, defeat, and mark time. (Note that the past tense of beat is beat, but the past participle is beaten.) The noun beat refers to a blow, a sound, a pronounced rhythm, or an habitual path or round of duty. The noun beet refers to a plant with a purplish red root thats used as a vegetable. Examples As a baby, my daughter used to beat against the bars of her crib until we lifted her out.Sean liked any kind of music as long as it had a hard driving beat.I tried to beat the traffic by leaving work early, but unfortunately everybody else had the same idea.Ricci said [the rug] once  belonged to Marie Dressier and cost fifteen hundred dollars, but theres a burnt place on it. Can you beat that?No, she said.(Katherine Anne Porter, Theft. The Gyroscope, 1930)Louise and Raymond Jr. had been in grade  school when Raymond and  Martha had bought a beat-up old white clapboard house two stories tall and one room wide, roofed with tin, that sat on a foundation of stacked stones in a valley at the foot of Scaly Mountain, North Carolina.(Pam Durban, Soon. The Southern Review, 1997)I planted a beet and a French turnip to see how vegetable roots flower.A perfect day in the city always starts like this: my friend Leo  picks me up and we go to a breakfast place called Rick and Anns where the y make  red flannel hash out  of beets and bacon, and then we cross the Bay Bridge  to the gardens of the Palace of the Fine Arts to sit in the wet grass and read poems out loud and talk about love.(Pam Houston, The Best Girlfriend You Never Had. Other Voices, 1999) Usage Notes The verb and noun beat should not be confused with the noun beet, which refers in British English to sugar beet and in American English to beetroot.(Martin Manser, Good Word Guide, 7th ed. Bloomsbury, 2011)Changes in phonemes produce changes in meaning. Variations in the vowel sound between b and t create 12 different meanings: bait, bat, beat/beet, bet, bit, bite, boat, boot, bought, bout, and but (Fromkin and Rodman, 1983).  Generally, though, consonant phonemes carry more information than do vowel phonemes. The treth ef thes stetement shed be evedent frem thes bref demenstretien.(David G. Myers, Psychology: Myers in Modules, 6th ed. Worth, 2001) Idiom Alerts The expression to beat around the bush means to ramble, to avoid speaking directly or getting to the point of an issue.I would talk to these children about blindness and guide dogs. Then I would ask them if they had any questions.  Children are very straightforward; they dont  beat around the bush.(E. Michael Lorance and Patricia W. Floyd,  Out of the Darkness Into Light. Westbow, 2012)The expression to beat a dead horse means to waste effort (speaking or acting) when theres no possibility of succeeding or making progress.Without broader structural changes . . . we can expect little improvement in the lives of immigrant youth. . . .  Right now, the efforts being made to improve the lives of immigrant youth and marginalized populations amount to little more than  beating a dead horse.(Sandra M. Bucerius, Unwanted: Muslim Immigrants, Dignity, and Drug Dealing. Oxford University Press, 2014) Practice (a) Shyla stared at the man whose long nose was the color of a raw _____.(b) _____ the eggs until the yolks and whites are blended.(c) I  felt ____  from a night of lousy sleep and I  felt ____  because of what had happened to Butterworth.(Stephen Dobyns, Saratoga Fleshpot. Penguin, 1995) Answers to Practice Exercises (a) Shyla stared at the man whose long nose was the color of a raw beet.(b) Beat the eggs until the yolks and whites are blended. (c) I  felt beat  from a night of lousy sleep and I  felt beat  because of what had happened to Butterworth.(Stephen Dobyns,  Saratoga Fleshpot. Penguin, 1995)