drum
pronunciation
How to pronounce drum in British English:
UK [drʌm]
How to pronounce drum in American English:
US [drʌm]
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- Noun:
- a musical percussion instrument; usually consists of a hollow cylinder with a membrane stretch across each end
- the sound of a drum
- a bulging cylindrical shape; hollow with flat ends
- a cylindrical metal container used for shipping or storage of liquids
- a hollow cast-iron cylinder attached to the wheel that forms part of the brakes
- small to medium-sized bottom-dwelling food and game fishes of shallow coastal and fresh waters that make a drumming noise
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- Verb:
- make a rhythmic sound
- play a percussion instrument
- study intensively, as before an exam
Word Origin
- drum
- drum: [16] Belying the total lack of similarity between the instruments, drum, trumpet, and trombone seem to be closely related. Drum appears to be a shortening of a slightly earlier English word drumslade ‘drum, drummer’, which was borrowed from Low German trommelslag ‘drumbeat’. This was a compound noun formed from trommel ‘drum’ and slag ‘hit’ (related to English slay).An alternative view is that English simply acquired the word from Middle Dutch tromme. Both these Germanic forms meant simply ‘drum’, but the picture becomes more complex with Middle High German tromme ‘drum’, for originally this had the sense ‘trumpet’, and what is more it had a variant form trumbe (its ancestor, Old High German trumpa, ultimate source of English trumpet and trombone, only meant ‘trumpet’).So the picture that emerges is of a word that originally referred in a fairly undifferentiated way to any musical instrument that made a loud noise.=> trombone, trumpet
- drum (n.)
- 1540s, probably from Middle Dutch tromme "drum," common Germanic (compare German Trommel, Danish tromme, Swedish trumma), probably of imitative origin. Not common before 1570s. Slightly older, and more common at first, was drumslade, apparently from Dutch or Low German trommelslag. Machinery sense attested from 1740, from similarity of shape.
- drum (v.)
- 1570s, from drum (n.). To drum (up) business, etc., is American English 1839, from the old way of drawing a crowd.
Example
- 1. The sounds of chanting , laughter and the marching bass drum .
- 2. And the earth replies all night , like a deep drum .
- 3. I will use some of the money to buy a drum set and have a cool pool .
- 4. The album features more modern instrumentation than his usually sparse efforts , including synths and drum machines .
- 5. At that moment a far off drum beat was heard .