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a piece of skin or vellum, to be beaten with a stick; or of a metallic hemisphere (kettledrum) with a single piece of skin to be so beaten; the common instrument for marking time in martial music; one of the pair of tympani in an orchestra, or cavalry band. The drums cry bud-a-dub. Gascoigne.

The chief or first drummer of a regiment; an instructor of drummers.

od of armature winding in which the wire is wound upon the outer surface of a cylinder or drum from end to end of the cylinder; -- distinguished from ring winding, etc.

The sound of a beaten drum; drum music. Whose morning drumbeat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of England. D. Webster.

To be sluggish or lazy; to be confused. [Obs.] Shak.

the family Sciænidæ, which makes a loud noise by means of its air bladder; -- called also drum.

The parchment or skin stretched over one end of a drum.

A hill of compact, unstratified, glacial drift or till, usually elongate or oval, with the larger axis parallel to the former local glacial motion.

Turbid; muddy. [Scot. & Obs. or Prov. Eng.] Wodroephe (1623). Burns.

One whose office is to best the drum, as in military exercises and marching.

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.

A very intense light, produced by turning two streams of gas, one oxygen and the other hydrogen, or coal gas, in a state of ignition, upon a ball of lime; or a stream of oxygen gas through a flame of alcohol upon a ball or disk of lime; -- called also oxycalcium light, or lime light.

A stick with which a drum is beaten.

The largest of the different kinds of drums, having two heads, and emitting a deep, grave sound. See Bass, a.

a puzzling question, of which the answer is or involves a pun. Or pun ambiguous, or conundrum quaint. J. Philips.

which sometimes prevent all progress for weeks; -- so called by sailors. To be in the doldrums, to be in a state of listlessness ennui, or tedium.

The tympanum. See Illust. of Ear.

Monotonous; dull; commonplace. "A humdrum crone." Bryant.

A drum made of thin copper in the form of a hemispherical kettle, with parchment stretched over the mouth of it.

One who plays on a kettledrum.