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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
drumming
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A snipe's drumming is one of the nicest of early year sounds.
▪ As the drumming built to a crescendo, the coffin lid snapped open, scattering coins into the dust.
▪ Far more wearing for the community at large was the incessant drumming which emanated from the jail-house.
▪ The drumming goes on within, in time to the flute.
▪ The drumming of hoofs was loud in their ears as Molly wriggled through on her stomach.
▪ The smoke-filled room was invaded by sexy, sensual snarls of guitars and harmonicas and a fantastic drumming beat throughout.
▪ The sudden cessation of the drumming was, peculiarly, more unnerving than its presence.
▪ While the mist rippled around them, the drumming began all around once more.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Drumming

Drum \Drum\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Drummed; p. pr. & vb. n. Drumming.]

  1. To beat a drum with sticks; to beat or play a tune on a drum.

  2. To beat with the fingers, as with drumsticks; to beat with a rapid succession of strokes; to make a noise like that of a beaten drum; as, the ruffed grouse drums with his wings.

    Drumming with his fingers on the arm of his chair.
    --W. Irving.

  3. To throb, as the heart. [R.]
    --Dryden.

  4. To go about, as a drummer does, to gather recruits, to draw or secure partisans, customers, etc,; -- with for.

Drumming

Drumming \Drum"ming\, n. The act of beating upon, or as if upon, a drum; also, the noise which the male of the ruffed grouse makes in spring, by beating his wings upon his sides.

Wiktionary
drumming

n. 1 The act of beating a drum. 2 A noise resembling that of a drum being beaten. 3 In many species of catfish, sound produced by contraction of specialized sonic muscles with subsequent reverberation through the swimbladder vb. (present participle of drum English)

WordNet
drumming

n. the act of playing drums; "he practiced his drumming several hours every day"

drum
  1. n. a musical percussion instrument; usually consists of a hollow cylinder with a membrane stretch across each end [syn: membranophone, tympan]

  2. the sound of a drum; "he could hear the drums before he heard the fifes"

  3. a bulging cylindrical shape; hollow with flat ends [syn: barrel]

  4. a cylindrical metal container used for shipping or storage of liquids [syn: metal drum]

  5. a hollow cast-iron cylinder attached to the wheel that forms part of the brakes [syn: brake drum]

  6. small to medium-sized bottom-dwelling food and game fishes of shallow coastal and fresh waters that make a drumming noise [syn: drumfish]

  7. [also: drumming, drummed]

drum
  1. v. make a rhythmic sound; "Rain drummed against the windshield"; "The drums beat all night" [syn: beat, thrum]

  2. play a percussion instrument

  3. study intensively, as before an exam; "I had to bone up on my Latin verbs before the final exam" [syn: cram, grind away, bone up, swot, get up, mug up, swot up, bone]

  4. [also: drumming, drummed]

drumming

See drum

Wikipedia
Drumming

Drumming may refer to:

  • the act of playing the drums or other percussion instruments
    • Drummer a musician who plays a drum, drum kit or drums
  • Drumming, a musical composition written by Steve Reich in 1971 for percussion ensemble
  • Drumming (snipe), mechanical sound produced by snipe in the course of aerial courtship displays
  • the rapid, repetitive series of strikes of a woodpecker's bill on a tree or other substrate to establish territory or attract a mate
  • a mating display of animals such as birds, often in connection with a lek (mating arena)

Drumming might also refer to:

  • Drumming out, an informal military ceremony to dishonorably discharge soldiers.
Drumming (Reich)

Drumming is a piece by minimalist composer Steve Reich, dating from 1970–1971. Reich began composition of the work after a short visit to Africa and observing music and musical ensembles there, especially under the Anlo Ewe master drummer Gideon Alorwoyie in Ghana. His visit was cut short after contracting malaria. K. Robert Schwarz describes the work as "minimalism's first masterpiece."

Drumming (snipe)

Drumming (also called bleating or winnowing) is a sound produced by snipe as part of their courtship display flights. The sound is produced mechanically (rather than vocally) by the vibration of the modified outer tail feathers, held out at a wide angle to the body, in the slipstream of a power dive. The display is usually crepuscular, or given throughout moonlit nights. The behaviour is generally characteristic of the genera Coenocorypha, Gallinago and Lymnocryptes. Sounds made by the closely related woodcocks (Scolopax spp.) in the course of their 'roding' display flights may be homologous to drumming.

The sound made by Gallinago snipes has been variously described as "drumming", "bleating", "throbbing", a "rattle" and an "eerie fluting". The drumming of the jack snipe (Limnocryptes minimus) has been likened to the sound made by a cantering or galloping horse. Miskelly records Coenocorypha snipes giving a non-vocal “roar” homologous to the drumming displays of Gallinago snipes, a sound formerly ascribed to a mythological bird, the hakawai. When breeding in northern Japan, Latham's snipe (Gallinago hardwickii) are known as “thunder birds” for the drumming noise made in the course of their display flights.

Usage examples of "drumming".

The chanting was picked up by others, and soon most of the people were deeply involved in a mesmerizing sequence that consisted of repetitive phrases sung in a pulsating beat with little change in tone, alternating with arrhythmic drumming that had more tonal variation than the voices.

Before I had time to wrench drum and drumsticks away from this most obstinate of all pupils without concern for his halo, Father Wiehnke was behind me -- my drumming had made itself heard throughout the length and breadth of the church -- Vicar Rasczeia was behind me.

I had fleshed the point of the falchion in the haunch of one of these animals when I heard the drumming of hoofs, and supposing them to belong to the destrier of an estafette, moved to the edge of the road to let him pass.

He went to bed a little after midnight, and was awakened from lurid dreams in the small hours of Monday by the sound of door knockers, feet running in the street, distant drumming, and a clamour of bells.

Through the fiddleys on the boat deck came a hot oily breath and the steady drumming of her burning heart.

The total zero behind the window waited patiently, quietly smiling his zero smile, toying a little at his shirt cuffs and drumming his well-done fingers a little on the counter, nervously, as bank clerks are always apt to do while waiting for old ladies to make that long hitchy walk across the foyer.

They let it go at that for a minute, Donahue drumming his heels, wearing an amused smile, Kiff peering at him with hard little shiny eyes.

He woke once in the middle of the night to hear rain drumming overhead, and a second time, some hours before dawn, when Mic shook him awake to go stand a watch.

Hoops for drumming on the large olla or vase-drums in the sacred orders.

She was a tabla, her mind, her ears resonated with the drumming of years and years ago, they resonated with the lie that time was a Moebius strip, that it had one side alone and could be traveled again and again.

He had brought a handheld timbale, which he played as he rode, his nimble fingers drumming and jangling out a merry rhythm.

Saw the deer start from the thicket, Saw the rabbit in his burrow, Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Rattling in his hoard of acorns, Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, Building nests among the pinetrees, And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, Flying to the fen-lands northward, Whirring, wailing far above him.

Drumming knuckles on his own control console, Tregare had to make do with brief, fragmentary reports from Peralta, plus occasional items from Zelde whenever she was someplace where communications could get through.

HUNG limply from the wagon wheel, his mind benumbed with the pain drumming through every extremity of his broken body.

He threw himself back and forth around the line of trees, drumming with open palms on tree trunks, ripping off thin branches and shaking them so their leaves cascaded around him, screeching and hooting the while.