- The 3 different uses of the word drum
- 1- To make music
- Example:
- 2- To celebrate someone
- Example:
- 3- In the printing house
- References
The word drum means to beat a drum. The Dictionary of the Spanish language of the Royal Academy defines it as an intransitive verb that means to play the tambourine.
The tambourine is a percussion instrument similar to the snare drum that would be used in a marching band. This word is from the French language and is in disuse, having been replaced by the current tambourine.
However, there is no single meaning for this word. There are several valid meanings, all very different from each other.
The 3 different uses of the word drum
1- To make music
Under the meaning of intransitive verb, this word does not require any extra complement apart from the subject to form a sentence.
Indeed, it would be enough to say "she drums", making it unnecessary to add an object for this sentence to make sense.
In fact, saying "she drummed the drum" would make the sentence redundant, yet valid.
Now, the redundancy disappears if an object other than a drum is added to the phrase.
Example:
- She drums on the table.
- Álvaro drums on the steering wheel while he waits for the traffic light to change.
2- To celebrate someone
The Royal Academy also mentions a transitive use of the verb, under which it means "to celebrate someone a lot, publishing and pondering their garments and ability or ability."
Due to its transitive nature, in this case the verb requires a subject whose abilities or capacities are celebrated.
Example:
- Maria taps her husband's culinary skills.
3- In the printing house
Finally, the Dictionary of the Spanish language gives another use as a transitive verb: “to match the letters of the mold with the drum”.
The drum in this case is not a musical instrument but a tool used by typographers to help align letters in traditional movable type printing presses.
The typographic drum is a table whose purpose is to absorb the impact of a small mallet or hammer to transfer the force of the impact to the types, also protecting them from potential deformations as a result of the blow.
Under this usage, the physical fonts or 'reverse letters' that were used to assemble words on a printing press (before digital presses) needed to be aligned with each other and be the same height before contacting the ink and the substrate (paper).
If not done this way, some letters in books could be marked more than others, or worse, sections of text could not be printed because they never made contact with the paper as a result of unevenness in the height of the type.
So drumming would be the action of hitting this board to align the types.
References
- What It Means - Drum what-significa.com
- Dictionary of the Spanish Language - Tamborilear del.rae.es
- Wikipedia - Intransitive Verb en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia - Typesetting en.wikipedia.org
- Tamborilete - Twitter twitter.com
- Tamborilear - General Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language - Don Eduardo Echegaray, Volume Fifth. Madrid, 1889.