Other forms: pulses
Your pulse is the regular beat of blood you can feel at the wrist or the neck. Take somebody's pulse, a racing pulse, my pulse was through the roof.
It also means any regular beat — the pulse of the music, a pulse of light — and in electronics a pulse is a short burst of current. Figuratively, to have your finger on the pulse means to know what is currently happening in a field, and to take the pulse of something is to check its mood. Note the entirely separate food sense: pulses are dried beans, peas and lentils, which is a different word and important in cooking.
1nounpulseThe regular beat of blood felt at the wrist or neck.
“Her pulse was fast and steady.”
2nounrhythmA regular beat or rhythm other than the body's — of music, of traffic, of a machine.
“You could feel the pulse of the bass through the floor.”
3noundriedDried beans, peas and lentils.
“The recipe is mostly pulses and stock.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
pulse is a regular beat.
Also accepted in games: heartbeat
Latin pulsus meant a beating, from pellere, to drive or strike — the same verb behind repel, expel and compel. A pulse is a striking, and the food word comes from a different Latin root, puls, a thick porridge.
Proto-Indo-European
*pel- (beat)
Middle English
pulse
English, today
pulse
Built from
From Late Middle English pulse, Middle English pous, pouse (“regular beat of arteries, pulse; heartbeat; place on the body where a pulse is detectable; beat (of a musical instrument); energy, vitality”)pouce, pounce, pouns, pounse, pousse, pouz, puls, from Anglo-Norman puls, pous, pus, and Middle French pouls, poulz, pouspousse, Old French pous, pulz (“regular beat of arteries; place on the body where a pulse is detectable”) (modern French pouls), and from their etymon Latin pulsus (“beat, impulse, pulse, stroke; regular beat of arteries or the heart”), from pellō (“to drive, impel, propel, push; to banish, eject, expel; to set in motion; to strike”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European pel- (“to beat, strike; to drive; to push, thrust”)) + -sus (a variant of -tus).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA