/dɹəʊn/, /dɹoʊn/
OriginFrom Middle English drane, from Old English drān, from Proto-West Germanic *drānu, from Proto-Germanic *drēniz, *drēnuz, *drenô (“an insect, drone”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreh₁n- (“bee, drone, hornet”). Cognate with Danish drone (“drone”), Dutch dar (“male bee or wasp”), German Drohne, dialectal German Dräne, Trehne, Trene (“drone”), Low German drone (“drone”), Swedish drönje, drönare (“drone”).
The etymology of the sense of "remote-controlled aircraft" is disputed; theories include early military UAVs dumbly flying on preset paths.
- A male ant, bee, or wasp, which does not work but can fertilize the queen.
“All with united force combine to drive / The lazy drones from the laborious hive.”
- archaicOne who does not work; a lazy person, an idler.
“SHYLOCK: / The patch is kind enough, but a huge feeder, / Snail-slow in profit, and he sleeps by day / More than the wild-cat; drones hive not with me; / Therefore I part with him; and part with him /”
“he that gathereth not every day as much as I doe, the next day shall be set beyond the river, and be banished from the Fort as a drone, till he amend his conditions or starve.”
“by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society”
- One who performs menial or tedious work.
- An aircraft operated by remote control, especially an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
“Several images of the compound were obtained via a drone overflight.”
“One team member launched a camera drone over the Third Pole.”
“An atomic tested Flying Fortress will make a nonstop flight from Florida, and from the time the first engine kicks over until the last propeller stops spinning at Bolling, no hands will touch the cont”
- Any remotely-operated vehicle (ROV), especially when multiple such vehicles are operated from a larger vessel.
“The Apex boat is a small radio-controlled craft which tows, at an angle, two Drone boats. The latter are small craft filled with explosives to be detonated from the control radio of the Apex boat.”
“Firefish, a drone boat, is the second radio-controlled target used by the detachment. A 17-foot fiber glass craft, it weighs 1700 pounds and operates from the support ship by remote control at a range”
“There, in the heart of a desert target range, operates a fleet of remote-control QM-56 mobile land drones, more familiarly described as modified tanks.”
- UgandaA Toyota HiAce or a similar van, especially one used by Ugandan state agents to kidnap opposition members.
“The van is locally referred to as "a drone" because it is compact and stable under extreme conditions. It is also very fast. Technically though, it is a Toyota Hiace, which is usually used for commerc”
“He has been arrested several times, transported in drone vans and brutalized in various detention facilities.”
“The Toyota Hiace is a light commercial van that can be used as a minibus, a taxi, or even an ambulance. But in Uganda, the "drone" has a sinister reputation. Chris Atukwasize, a cartoonist at the Dail”
- In dronification kink, one who is mindless and obedient to a dominant, characterized by a detached and robotic identity and an anonymous appearance, typically composed of a latex suit and gas mask.
- A low-pitched hum or buzz.
“He chanted as he flew and the car responded with sonorous drone.”
- One of the fixed-pitch pipes on a bagpipe.
- uncountableA genre of music that uses repeated lengthy droning sounds.
- A humming or deep murmuring sound.
“The monotonous drone of the wheel.”
- UK, slang, uncountableThe drug mephedrone.
- colloquial, transitiveTo kill or destroy with a missile fired by unmanned aircraft.
“"I have a lot of advice for him," Ayers said in the interview, aired Tuesday night. "I want him to stop droning people. I want him to close Guantanamo. I want universal healthcare. Don't you think we ”
““He won’t be waging wars all the world ― he’ll be waging ‘warsuits,’” Noah said. “Droning people with subpoenas all over the globe.””
““Are we still droning people? Yeah,” he said. “Are we still running covert operations that weren’t authorized by Congress? Yeah. Is the government still spying on Americans without warrants? Without d”
- To produce a low-pitched hum or buzz.
- To speak in a monotone.
Formsdrones(plural) · drones(present, singular, third-person) · droning(participle, present) · droned(participle, past) · droned(past) · Drones(plural)