Drum

A crowded evening party, a contraction of “drawing-room” (drʹ-ʹoom). Cominges, the French ambassador, writing to Louis XIV., calls these assemblies drerums and driwromes. (See Rout, Hurricane.)

“The Comte de Broglie … goes sometimes to the drerums, and sometimes to the driwrome of the Princess of Wales.”—Nineteenth Century: Comte de Cominges: Sept., 1891, p. 461.

“It is impossible to live in a drum.”—Lady M. W. Montagu.

John Drum’s entertainment. Turning an unwelcome guest out of doors. The allusion is to drumming a soldier out of a regiment.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.

Drum

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