pulsate

UK/pʌlˈseɪt/US/ˈpʌl.seɪt/

verbB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — pulse sits at #1,350neutral

Other forms: pulsating, pulsates, pulsated

To pulsate is to throb with a steady beat. A vein in the neck, a bass line coming through a wall.

Anything with a rhythm can pulsate: a light that pulsates, music that pulsates, a wound that pulsates with pain. Medicine uses it precisely, for blood vessels; the rest of the language uses it loosely, for a city or a crowd that feels alive. The adjective pulsating is commoner than the verb and usually means thrilling — a pulsating final, a pulsating performance. Underneath all of them sits pulse, the same idea in a plainer word.

Definitions of pulsate

1verbpulsateTo beat or throb with a strong, steady rhythm.B2
“The music pulsated through the floorboards.”
synonyms: throb, beat

Where it comes from

A pulse is a striking. Latin pulsō meant to strike repeatedly, a form of pellō, to strike, so something pulsating is being hit over and over.

Latin
pellō — to strike
NL.
pulsō — (of an organ) to pulse, to emit a pulse
English, today
pulsate

Built from

pulsātiō · NL. — pulsation
pulsō · Latin — to strike repeatedly
pulsus · Latin — a pulse

Perhaps formed within English as a pulsation. A figurative derivation from NL. pulsō (“(of an organ) to pulse, to emit a pulse”) is also possible, itself a back-formation of pulsātiō (“pulsation”), or derived from classical pulsō (“to strike repeatedly”) with semantic influence from classical pulsus (“a pulse”). Ultimately from Latin pellō (“to strike”). by surface analysis, pulse + -ate. a doublet of push.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 14 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

pulsate in the wild

The multicolored lights would pulsate to the beat of the music.
Light organ
A bright spot in the inner disk appears to pulsate with a 71-second period.
DQ Herculis
AGB stars are often unstable and tend to pulsate, and Lambda Ursae Minoris is classified as a semiregular variable star and its brightness varies by about 0.1 magnitudes.
Lambda Ursae Minoris
Later observation and analysis has found HL Tau 76 to pulsate in over 40 independent vibrational modes, with periods between 380 seconds and 1390 seconds.
HL Tau 76
Like other pulsating white dwarfs, its variability arises from non-radial gravity wave pulsations within the star itself.
GD 358

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the pulsō family

push

pulsate — used too rare to measure · point at the bar for the others

pulse

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