Word for Wednesday: Drum

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For the month of May, we have chosen musical instruments as the theme for our Word for Wednesday posts. 

The word music entered English in the thirteenth century as ‘musike’ via the Old French ‘musique’ and the Latin ‘musica’ meaning ‘music or poetry’. ‘Musica’ is from the Greek ‘mousikē’ which means ‘art of the muses’. 

So far in our exploration into where musical instruments get their names from, we’ve looked at the words piano and guitar. Today’s word is drum. 

A drum is a percussion instrument which usually consists of a hollow cylinder with a membrane stretched across one or both ends. Drums can be played alone or as part of a set. Unlike piano and guitar, the word is also used as a verb to describe the act of playing the drum.

Drum entered English in the early fifteenth century as ‘drom’. 'Drom’ probably comes from the Middle Dutch ‘tromme’ which is an onomatopoeic word that describes the sound a drum makes.  


20 May 2020
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