Pulse
late Middle English: from Latin pulsus ‘beating’, from pellere ‘to drive, beat’.
wiktionary
From Late Middle English pulse, Middle English pous, pouse(“regular beat of arteries, pulse; heartbeat; place on the body where a pulse is detectable; beat (of a musical instrument); energy, vitality”)[and other forms], [1] from Anglo-Norman puls, pous, pus, and Middle French pouls, poulz, pous[and other forms], Old French pous, pulz(“regular beat of arteries; place on the body where a pulse is detectable”) (modern French pouls), and from their etymonLatin pulsus(“beat, impulse, pulse, stroke; regular beat of arteries or the heart”), from pellō(“to drive, impel, propel, push; to banish, eject, expel; to set in motion; to strike”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pel-(“to beat, strike; to drive; to push, thrust”)) + -sus (a variant of -tus( suffix forming action nouns from verbs)). [2]
From Late Middle English pulse, Middle English pulsen(“to pulse, throb”), [3] from Latin pulsāre, the present active infinitive of pulsō(“to push; to beat, batter, hammer, strike; to knock on; to pulsate; (figuratively) to drive or urge on, impel; to move; to agitate, disquiet, disturb”), the frequentative of pellō(“to drive, impel, propel, push; to banish, eject, expel; to set in motion; to strike”); [4] see further at etymology 1.
From Middle English puls(“(collectively) seeds of a leguminous plant used as food; leguminous plants collectively; a species of leguminous plant”), Early Middle English pols (in compounds), [5] possibly from Anglo-Norman pus, puz, Middle French pouls, pols, pous, and Old French pous, pou(“gruel, mash, porridge”) (perhaps in the sense of a gruel made from pulses), or directly from their etymonLatin puls(“meal (coarse-ground edible part of various grains); porridge”), probably from Ancient Greek πόλτος(póltos, “porridge made from flour”), from Proto-Indo-European *pel-(“dust; flour”) (perhaps by extension from *pel-(“to beat, strike; to drive; to push, thrust”), in the sense of something beaten). [6]
etymonline
pulse (n.1)
"a throb, a beat, a stroke," especially a measured, regular, or rhythmical beat, early 14c., from Old French pous, pulse (late 12c., Modern French pouls) and directly from Latin pulsus (in pulsus venarum "beating from the blood in the veins"), past participle of pellere "to push, drive" (from PIE root *pel- (5) "to thrust, strike, drive").
Extended usages, of feeling, life, opinion, etc., are attested from early 16c. The figurative use for "life, vitality, essential energy" is from 1530s.
pulse (n.2)
"peas, beans, lentils; the esculent seeds of any leguminous plant," late 13c., puls, from Old French pouls, pous, pols and directly from Latin puls "thick gruel, porridge, mush," which is suspected of being (perhaps via Etruscan), from Greek poltos "porridge" made from flour, or both the Greek and Latin words might be from the same source (compare pollen), which might be a loanword from a non-PIE Mediterranean language or an as-yet-unknown PIE root.
pulse (v.)
"to beat, throb," as the arteries or the heart, early 15c., pulsen, from pulse (n.1) or else from Latin pulsare "to beat, throb." Related: Pulsed; pulsing.
