Other forms: dramas
Drama is serious storytelling of strong feelings, on stage or on screen. A television drama, a costume drama, studying drama at school.
It covers the art form, a single work, and the school subject, and all three are ordinary. There is a fourth use that has become extremely common in speech: drama meaning unnecessary emotional fuss — don't make a drama out of it, I can't be doing with the drama. That use is informal and slightly dismissive, and it is where drama queen comes from. Note that dramatic can describe both a play and a sudden change in figures, and that the two senses are far apart.
1noundramaA serious play or film about strong feelings.
“It is a drama set in a hospital in the 1950s.”
2nounactingPlays and acting as an art form or a school subject.
“She studied drama and now teaches it.”
3nounexcitingExciting or emotional events.
“There was a good deal of drama at the meeting.”
4noununnecessaryUnnecessary emotional fuss.
“It is a broken plate — spare me the drama.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
drama is a form of storytelling.
Ancient Greek drama meant simply a deed or an action — from dran, to do. A drama was a thing done rather than a thing told, which is exactly the distinction between a play and a story, and the word has kept it for two and a half thousand years.
Latin
drāma
English, today
drama
Built from
Borrowed from Latin drāma. From Latin drāma, from Ancient Greek δρᾶμα (“an act, a theatrical act, a play”), from δράω (“to act, to take action, to achieve”). a doublet of dorama.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA