drone

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (2)  · 
Finally, this drone is the only thing that remains, a slow and distant rumble that subtly ends the piece.

View all »
Definitions (32)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (12)

  1. noun A male bee, especially a honeybee, that is characteristically stingless, performs no work, and produces no honey. Its only function is to mate with the queen bee.
  2. noun An idle person who lives off others; a loafer.
  3. noun A person who does tedious or menial work; a drudge: "undervalued drones who labored in obscurity” (Caroline Bates).

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (11)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (7)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • One of those things that you just saw flash before you was a Raven drone, a hand held tossed one. —  PW Singer on military robots and the future of war
  • One of the people I met with there was a news editor, and we're talking as a drone is flying above him. —  PW Singer on military robots and the future of war
  • The first was that of Chief Justice Stephen Sewall of Massachusetts, and the other was that of His Majesty George II, the Snuffy old drone from the German hive as he is described by the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." —  James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist
  • Then I turn and follow the drone, which is already gliding down the polished-wood corridor, leading me to my room. —  Aeon One
  • He looked back: the drone was almost on top of him. —  Eric Nylund - HALO 4 - Ghosts of Onyx (v1.0)
 

Tags

drone hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Stats

This word has been looked up 164 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

hum ·  whine ·  rumble ·  murmur ·  whir ·  robot ·  rattle ·  satellite ·  aircraft ·  vibration ·  chirp ·  throb

Used in the same contextWord Family

drone:   drones
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (6)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. Middle English, from Old English drān.
  2. From drone1 (from the bee's humming sound).

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (4)

  1. Altered, in conformation to drone, n., from * droun = Scots drune, low, murmur, from Middle English drounen (rare), roar or bellow (said of a dragon); not in Anglo-Saxon; = Middle Dutch dronen, dreunen, tremble, quaver, Dutch dreunen, make a trembling noise, = Middle Low German dronen, Low German drönen, later G. dröhnen, drönen, drone, hum, = Icelandic drynja, roar (cf. drynr, a roaring, drunur, a thundering), = Swedish dröna, low, bellow, drone, = Danish dröne, peal, rumble, boom (cf. drön, a boom). Cf. Gothic (Moesogothic) drunjus, a sound, voice; Greek θρῆνος, a dirge (see threne). Hence (remotely) drone.
  2. from drone, v.
  3. Early modern English also droane; from Middle English drone, drane, from Anglo-Saxon drān, also drœ¯n = Old Low German drān, Middle Low German drane, drone, Low German drone (later G. drohne, and prob. Danish drone = Icelandic drjōni, a drone; cf. Swedish drönare, a drone, literally ‘droner’); akin to Old High German treno, Middle High German trene, tren, German dial. (Sax., Austr.) trehne, trene, a drone. Cf. Lithuanian tranni, Greek (Lacon.) θρῶναξ, a drone, τενθρήνη, τενθρηδών a kind of wasp or bee, ἀνθρήνη, ἀνθρηδών, a hornet or wasp (see Anthrenus); all apparently ult. from the imitative root of drone, v.
  4. from drone, n.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/droʊn/
by American Heritage
Hear a sound »

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a week.

Recently looked up

Bonafide · boner · evil · exclude · propagandism

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich