Wordcyclopedia | English | beating the index

beating Noun

— Beating is a stroke; a blow.

the Determiner

— Used, instead of a, to reference something specific, already known to exist. Compare "I read a book." and "I read the book." — Used with a stress, to show that the word following is special. Are you the John Smith that I went to school with? — Used with an adjective that acts like a noun to mean all of the people concerned The poor are always with us. — Used with superlatives forms of adjectives and adverbs. You are the best.

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index Noun

— An index is an alphabetical (A to Z) list, usually at the back of a book, where you can find the pages in a book that talk about particular things or words. Look in the index to see where they talk about Chomsky. — An index shows the level of prices, wages, etc. so you can compare them with those of an earlier date. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones index closed 10 points up at 2,731.23.

index Verb

— If you index something, you make an index (guide) for it. — If you index something to a certain price level, you make it go up or down with that level.

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