drone

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. 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. n. An idle person who lives off others; a loafer.
3. n. A person who does tedious or menial work; a drudge: "undervalued drones who labored in obscurity” ( Caroline Bates).
4. n. A pilotless aircraft operated by remote control.
5. v. To make a continuous low dull humming sound: "Somewhere an electric fan droned without end” ( William Styron).
6. v. To speak in a monotonous tone: The lecturer droned on for hours.
7. v. To pass or act in a monotonous way.
8. v. To utter in a monotonous low tone: "The mosquitoes droned their angry chant” ( W. Somerset Maugham).
9. n. A continuous low humming or buzzing sound.
10. n. Music Any of the pipes of a bagpipe that lack finger holes and produce a single tone.
11. n. Music A long sustained tone.
12. n. Music Any of various instruments that produce only a constant pitch.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To roar; bellow.
2. To give forth a monotonous, unvaried tone; utter a dull humming sound; hum or buzz, as a beetle or a bagpipe.
3. To use a dull, monotonous tone: as, he drones in his reading.
4. To give forth or utter in a monotonous, dull tone: as, he drones his sentences.
5. n. A monotonous, continued tone or sound; a humming: as, the drone of a bee.
6. n. In music: A pipe in the bagpipe which gives out a continuous and invariable tone.
7. n. A drone-bass.
8. n. The male of the honey-bee. It is smaller than the queen bee, but larger than the working bee. The drones make no honey, but after living a few weeks and impregnating the queen they are killed or driven from the hive by the workers. See bee.
9. n. Hence An idler; a sluggard; one who lives on the labor of others.
10. To live in idleness.
11. n. The tone emitted by the drone of a bagpipe.

Wiktionary

1. v. To produce a low-pitched hum or buzz.
2. v. To speak in a monotone way.
3. n. A low-pitched hum or buzz.
4. n. One who performs menial or tedious work; a drudge.
5. n. One of the fixed-pitch pipes on a bagpipe.
6. n. A genre of music similar to that of noise.
7. n. A male bee or wasp, which does not work but can fertilise the queen (Wikipedia).
8. n. Someone who doesn't work; a lazy person, an idler.
9. n. A remotely controlled aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, Wikipedia).

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Zoöl.) The male of bees, esp. of the honeybee. It gathers no honey. See honeybee.
2. n. One who lives on the labors of others; a lazy, idle fellow; a sluggard.
3. n. That which gives out a grave or monotonous tone or dull sound; as: (a) A drum. [Obs.] Halliwell. (b) The part of the bagpipe containing the two lowest tubes, which always sound the key note and the fifth.
4. n. A humming or deep murmuring sound.
5. n. (Mus.) A monotonous bass, as in a pastoral composition.
6. v. To utter or make a low, dull, monotonous, humming or murmuring sound.
7. v. To love in idleness; to do nothing.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. stingless male bee in a colony of social bees (especially honeybees) whose sole function is to mate with the queen
2. n. a pipe of the bagpipe that is tuned to produce a single continuous tone
3. v. talk in a monotonous voice
4. n. someone who takes more time than necessary; someone who lags behind
5. v. make a monotonous low dull sound
6. n. an unchanging intonation
7. n. an aircraft without a pilot that is operated by remote control