Beat (To)
.To strike. (Anglo-Saxon, beatan.)
To beat a retreat (French, battre en retraite); to beat to arms; to beat a charge. Military terms similar to the above.
To beat the air. To strike out at nothing, merely to bring one’s muscies into play, as pugilists do before they begin to fight; to toil without profit; to work to no purpose.
“So fight I, not as one that beateth the air.”—l Cor. ix. 26.
To beat the bush. One beat the bush and another caught the hare. “Il a battu les buissons, et autre a pris les oiseaux.” “Il bat le buisson sans prendre les oisillons” is a slightly different idea, meaning he has toiled in vain. “Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours” (John iv. 48). The allusion is to beaters, whose business it is to beat the bushes and start the game for a shooting party.