Pulse is the rhythmic beating you feel when you press your fingers against certain spots on your body, like the inside of your wrist or the side of your neck. What you're feeling is your heart pushing blood through your arteries with each beat. Doctors and nurses check your pulse to see how fast your heart is working: a typical pulse for a kid at rest is around 70 to 100 beats per minute, but it speeds up when you run or get excited.

The word also describes any regular beat or throb. Music has a pulse: that steady rhythm you tap your foot to. A city might have a pulse, meaning the constant hum of activity and energy flowing through it. When someone says they're checking the pulse of public opinion, they mean figuring out what most people are thinking or feeling at that moment.

In technology, a pulse is a single burst of energy or signal. Computer chips send millions of electrical pulses every second to process information. Scientists use light pulses in experiments. The word captures that same quality: something brief, strong, and repeating.

As a verb, pulse means to beat, throb, or send out bursts in a steady pattern. When someone says to take the pulse of something, they mean stop and assess how things are going. That meaning connects back to the medical sense: just as checking your physical pulse tells you about your body's condition, taking the pulse of a project tells you about its health and progress.