beat hollow
English
[edit]Alternative forms
[edit]Verb
[edit]beat hollow (third-person singular simple present beats hollow, present participle beating hollow, simple past beat hollow, past participle beaten hollow or (colloquial) beat hollow)
- (transitive) To beat up (a person) severely.
- (transitive, figurative) To defeat severely.
- 1845, Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Thomas Ollive Mabbott, Complete Poems, University of Illinois Press, published 2000, page 351:
- "The Raven" has had a great run ... but I wrote it for the express purpose of running — just as I did "The Gold-Bug" ... the bird beat the bug, though, all hollow.
- 1881, Charles Darwin, “letter”, in Darwin Correspondence Database[1], retrieved 2013-07-07:
- The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turks hollow in the struggle for existence.
- 1915, John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps, William Blackwood & Sons, page 9:
- […] and every night we had a game of chess, at which he beat me hollow.