DRONE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Drone

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/droʊn/ Listen

noun

Drone n.

1.

(Zool.) The male of bees, esp. of the honeybee. It gathers no honey. See Honeybee. "All with united force combine to drive The lazy drones from the laborious hive."

2.

One who lives on the labors of others; a lazy, idle fellow; a sluggard. "By living as a drone,to be an unprofitable and unworthy member of so noble and learned a society."

3.

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.

A humming or deep murmuring sound. "The monotonous drone of the wheel."

5.

(Mus.) A monotonous bass, as in a pastoral composition.

verb

Drone v. i. (past & past part. droned; pres. part. droning)

1.

To utter or make a low, dull, monotonous, humming or murmuring sound. "Where the beetle wheels his droning flight."

2.

To love in idleness; to do nothing. "Race of droning kings."

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Etymology of 'Drone'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Drone" Quotes from Famous Books

... glorious in thought, depend upon our own exertions. This is as true of women as of men. Then the idler is a leech on himself—his own despoiler. An idle woman is as base a thing as an idle man. She was made for usefulness. A drone in any hive is a base bee—a nuisance, ...

— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... sobolifera on the pupae of Cicada in the West Indies. A romantic account is given of this in an extract cited by Dr. Watson in his communication to the Royal Society.[O] "The vegetable fly is found in the island Dominica, and (excepting that it has no wings) resembles the drone, both in size and colour, more than any other English insect. In the month of May it buries itself in the earth and begins to vegetate. By the latter end of July, the tree is arrived at its full growth, and resembles a coral branch, and is about three ...

— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke

... enormous dynamos, cathode tubes a hundred feet long, masses and mountains of such fantastic apparatus as he had never encountered. The air was bluish, electric. From the black substance came a phosphorescent radiance. The triumphant drone of motors and a terrific crackle of electricity were everywhere. Off to his right purple-blue flames the size of Sequoia trees flickered around a group of what looked like condensers as huge as Gibraltar. At the base of the central tower half a mile distant Phobar could ...

— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei

... mention, were freely handed about; so that half-an-hour which passed before the sermon began was agreeably spent. In the meanwhile, mass was being celebrated in the main hall of the temple, and the monotonous nasal drone of the plain chant was faintly heard in the distance. So soon as this was over, the lay clerk sat himself down by the hanging drum, and, to its accompaniment, began intoning the prayer, "Na Mu Miyo Ho Ren Go Kiyo," the congregation fervently joining ...

— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... and fifty-five. Georgius Secundus was then alive, - Snuffy old drone from the German hive. That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown. It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon ...

— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

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