Terminology: “Beat”

As a direction in a script, (beat) means to take a brief pause before the next line of dialogue.

In analyzing a script, a beat is a basic dramatic unit that can encompass a couple of lines or an entire scene. One beat ends and another begins every time there is a change in a character's objective or relationship to another character.

As part of a spoken instruction, a beat can be a unit of time roughly equal to one second: "Cross to the left, wait 10 beats, and cross back."