Other forms: drums, drumming, drummed
A drum is the round instrument you hit with sticks or hands to keep the beat, a skin pulled tight over a hollow body. The kit behind the band, a marching band snare, a child banging a saucepan with a wooden spoon.
Drums in the plural means the whole kit, so he plays drums. Away from music, a drum is any big cylinder: an oil drum rusting in a yard, the drum of a washing machine turning your clothes over, a brake drum inside a wheel. The verb is to beat or tap on and on, as in rain drumming on a roof or fingers drumming on a table while you wait. To drum up business is to work hard at getting it, and to drum something into someone is to repeat it until it sticks. The player is a drummer, and drumming is both the playing and the sound.
1noundrumA musical instrument you strike, made of a skin stretched over a round frame.~48%
“He played the drum louder than the rest of the band put together.”
2nounfullThe full set of drums and cymbals played in a band.~16%
“She has played drums since she was nine years old.”
3nounlargeA large cylindrical container, especially for oil or chemicals.~2%
“Rainwater had collected in an old drum behind the shed.”
4nouncylinderA cylinder that turns inside a machine.~32%
“The washing machine drum stopped halfway through the cycle.”
5verbbeatTo beat or tap something over and over.~2%
“He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel at every red light.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 8 sentences found in the wild and placed 6 of them on a sense (2 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
drum is a musical instrument.
Also accepted in games: drums
Drum may be a back-formation from drumslade, which English took from Middle Dutch trommelslach, a drumbeat, from trommel, drum, and slach, beat. Cut off the beat and the drum is what is left. It may instead have come straight from a neighbouring Germanic language, since Middle Dutch tromme and Middle Low German trumme both meant drum. Either way, the word sounds like the thing.
Middle Dutch
trommelslach — drumbeat
English, today
drum
Built from
Perhaps a back-formation from drumslade, from Middle Dutch trommelslach (“drumbeat”), from trommel (“drum”) + slach (“beat”) (Dutch slag). Or perhaps borrowed directly from a continental Germanic language; compare Middle Dutch tromme (“drum”), Middle Low German trumme (“drum”) et al. Compare also Middle High German trumme, trumbe (“drum”), Old High German trumba (“trumpet”). Compare Ancient Greek τῠ́μπᾰνον (“kettledrum”) whence Modern English timbre.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA