beat vs punch

beat

verb
  • To hit; to strike. 

  • simple past tense of beat 

  • To rob. 

  • To indicate by beating or drumming. 

  • To win against; to defeat or overcome; to do or be better than (someone); to excel in a particular, competitive event. 

  • To sound with more or less rapid alternations of greater and lesser intensity, so as to produce a pulsating effect; said of instruments, tones, or vibrations not perfectly in unison. 

  • To exercise severely; to perplex; to trouble. 

  • To make a sound when struck. 

  • To sail to windward using a series of alternate tacks across the wind. 

  • To strike or pound repeatedly, usually in some sort of rhythm. 

  • To strike (water, foliage etc.) in order to drive out game; to travel through (a forest etc.) for hunting. 

  • To tread, as a path. 

  • To mix food in a rapid fashion. Compare whip. 

  • To make a succession of strokes on a drum. 

  • To move with pulsation or throbbing. 

  • To strike repeatedly; to inflict repeated blows; to knock vigorously or loudly. 

  • To have sexual intercourse. 

  • To arrive at a place before someone. 

  • To persuade the seller to reduce a price. 

  • To be in agitation or doubt. 

adj
  • Ugly. 

  • Having impressively attractive makeup. 

  • Boring. 

  • Exhausted. 

  • Relating to the Beat Generation. 

  • Dilapidated, beat up. 

noun
  • A short pause in a play, screenplay, or teleplay, for dramatic or comedic effect. 

  • A beatnik. 

  • A pulse on the beat level, the metric level at which pulses are heard as the basic unit. Thus a beat is the basic time unit of a piece. 

  • The route patrolled by a police officer or a guard. 

  • The primary focus of a reporter's stories (such as police/courts, education, city government, business etc.). 

  • A rhythm. 

  • The rhythm signalled by a conductor or other musician to the members of a group of musicians. 

  • A pulsation or throb. 

  • A makeup look; compare beat one's face. 

  • A stroke; a blow. 

  • The instrumental portion of a piece of hip-hop music. 

  • The act of scouring, or ranging over, a tract of land to rouse or drive out game; also, those so engaged, collectively. 

  • A smart tap on the adversary's blade. 

  • The interference between two tones of almost equal frequency 

  • A precinct. 

punch

verb
  • To strike with one's fist. 

  • To employ a punch to create a hole in or stamp or emboss a mark on something. 

  • To thrust against; to poke. 

  • To enter (information) on a device or system. 

  • To herd. 

  • To mark a ticket. 

  • To make holes in something (rail ticket, leather belt, etc) 

  • To operate (a device or system) by depressing a button, key, bar, or pedal, or by similar means. 

  • In winemaking, to perform pigeage: to stamp down grape skins that float to the surface during fermentation. 

  • To hit (a ball or similar object) with less than full force. 

noun
  • A mechanism for punching holes in paper or other thin material. 

  • A hole or opening created with a punch. 

  • Impact. 

  • Any of various riodinid butterflies of the genus Dodona of Asia. 

  • An extension piece applied to the top of a pile; a dolly. 

  • A prop, as for the roof of a mine. 

  • Power, strength, energy. 

  • A device, generally slender and round, used for creating holes in thin material, for driving an object through a hole in a containing object, or to stamp or emboss a mark or design on a surface. 

  • A hit or strike with one's fist. 

  • A blow from something other than the fist. 

  • A beverage, generally containing a mixture of fruit juice and some other beverage, often alcoholic. 

How often have the words beat and punch occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )