pulsation

Inherited from Middle English pulsacioun (“pulsing of the blood, throbbing”),^[1] borrowed from Middle French pulsacion (“(of bells) a striking (end of 14th c.); (of a diseased part of the body) a throbbing (1377); pulsation (1575)”), and its source, Latin pulsātiō (“(classical Latin) a beating or striking; (Medieval Latin, medical) rhythmical expansion and contraction (1363 in Chauliac)”).^[2] By surface analysis, pulsate +‎ -ion.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /pʌlˈseɪʃn̩/

• Audio (Southern England):

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• (US) IPA^(key): /pəlˈseɪʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

pulsation (countable and uncountable, plural pulsations)

1. The regular throbbing of the heart, an artery etc. in a living body; the pulse. [from 15th c.]
   • 1844, Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial:

     Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.

2. Any rhythmic beating, throbbing etc. [from 17th c.]
   • 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XII”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC:

     Lo! as a dove when up she springs
     ⁠To bear thro’ Heaven a tale of woe,
     ⁠Some dolorous message knit below
     The wild pulsation of her wings;
     Like her I go; I cannot stay;
     ⁠I leave this mortal ark behind […]

3. (botany) The rhythmic increase and decrease of size in naked zoospores and plasmodia.
4. (now rare) Physical striking; a blow. [from 17th c.]
   • 1765–1769, William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, (please specify |book=I to IV), Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] Clarendon Press, →OCLC:

     By the Cornelian law, pulsation as well as verberation is prohibited.

5. A single beat, throb or vibration. [from 19th c.]

• platinous

From Latin pulsātiōnem.

• IPA^(key): /pyl.sa.sjɔ̃/

• Audio (France (Lyon)):

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• Audio (France (Vosges)):

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pulsation f (plural pulsations)

1. pulsation

• “pulsation”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012