From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishheartbeatheart‧beat /ˈhɑːtbiːt $ ˈhɑːrt-/ noun [countable, uncountable] 1 MBODYthe action or sound of your heart as it pumps blood through your body2 → be a heartbeat away from something3 → in a heartbeat4 → the heartbeat of something
Examples from the Corpus
heartbeat• In addition to being the seat of consciousness and awareness, the brain controls heartbeat, breathing, and other life-support systems.• It opens rather clinically, with a sound-and-vision sequence featuring heartbeats, hospital interiors and instruments and a how-its-done Idiot's Guide.• She turned her hot face into the pillows and tried to get some sort of control over her heartbeats.• Put simply, cardiac arrhythmia is an irregular heartbeat.• A baby's heartbeat is nearly twice as fast as an adult's.• Within a week, the fetus's heartbeat had returned to normal. 