| a stew of meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc. |
| a screen or mat covered with a dark material for shielding a camera lens from excess light or glare. |
drum1 (drʌm) ![]() | |
| —n | |
| 1. | music a percussion instrument sounded by striking a membrane stretched across the opening of a hollow cylinder or hemisphere |
| 2. | informal beat the drum for to attempt to arouse interest in |
| 3. | the sound produced by a drum or any similar sound |
| 4. | an object that resembles a drum in shape, such as a large spool or a cylindrical container |
| 5. | architect |
| a. one of a number of cylindrical blocks of stone used to construct the shaft of a column | |
| b. the wall or structure supporting a dome or cupola | |
| 6. | short for eardrum |
| 7. | Also called: drumfish any of various North American marine and freshwater sciaenid fishes, such as Equetus pulcher (striped drum), that utter a drumming sound |
| 8. | a type of hollow rotor for steam turbines or axial compressors |
| 9. | computing See disk a rotating cylindrical device on which data may be stored for later retrieval: now mostly superseded by disks |
| 10. | archaic a drummer |
| 11. | informal (Austral) the drum the necessary information (esp in the phrase give (someone) the drum) |
| —vb (sometimes foll by up) , drums, drumming, drummed | |
| 12. | to play (music) on or as if on a drum |
| 13. | to beat or tap (the fingers) rhythmically or regularly |
| 14. | (intr) (of birds) to produce a rhythmic sound, as by beating the bill against a tree, branch, etc |
| 15. | to summon or call by drumming |
| 16. | (tr) to instil by constant repetition: to drum an idea into someone's head |
| [C16: probably from Middle Dutch tromme, of imitative origin] | |
| drum up | |
| —vb | |
| (tr, adverb) to evoke or obtain (support, business, etc) by solicitation or canvassing | |
drum (drŭm)
n.
See eardrum.
drum
adj, n. Ancient techspeak term referring to slow, cylindrical magnetic media that were once state-of-the-art storage devices. Under BSD Unix the disk partition used for swapping is still called `/dev/drum'; this has led to considerable humor and not a few straight-faced but utterly bogus `explanations' getting foisted on newbies. See also "The Story of Mel" in Appendix A.drum up
Bring about by persistent effort, as in I'm trying to drum up more customers, or We have to drum up support for this amendment. This expression alludes to making repeated drumbeats. [Mid-1800s]
Devise, invent, obtain, as in He hoped to drum up an alibi. [Mid-1800s]