drumbeat

drum +‎ beat

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drumbeat (plural drumbeats)

1. The beating of a drum.
2. The sound of a beating drum.

   This music has a groovy drumbeat that makes me dance!

   • 2015, Tom Liam Lynch, The Hidden Role of Software in Educational Research, page 54:

     This is not the drumbeat of a single drummer leading a charge.

3. (by extension) A repetitive beating sound.
   • 2010, Dale Andrade, Surging South of Baghdad, page 108:

     The drumbeat of roadside bombs and suicide attacks continued all over the 2d Brigade, 10th Mountain Division's area of operations.

   • 2015, Alison Gardiner, The Serpent of Eridor, page 113:

     Rycant stood close enough to catch his words despite the drumbeat of rain on the thick leaves above their heads, but only Rectoria picked up the note of relief.

   • 2020, Mark David Gerson, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write:

     What does the drumbeat of your heart say?

4. (figuratively) A driving force.
   • 1996, Paulette D. Kilmer, The Fear of Sinking, page 48:

     Nevertheless, greatness rarely receives public approval, because most people spend their lives goose-stepping to the drumbeat of economic necessity.

   • 2004, Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything:

     On a more scholarly level the drumbeat of need was signalled too: as when the newly appointed headmaster of the Merchant Taylors' School, Richard Mulcaster, declared: 'it would be a thing verie praiseworthy ... if som one learned and as laborious a man wold gather all the wordes which we vse in our English tung ... into one dictionarie.'

   • 2005, R. C. Leonard, Silence of the Drums, page 66:

     We can hear the drumbeat of history, right in our own time.

   • 2008, Steven M. Gillon, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation:

     While the partisan wrangling annoyed Clinton, it was the drumbeat of attacks on his character and the constant investigations of his administration that bothered him most of all.

   • 2012, J. Frederick Arment, The Elements of Peace: How Nonviolence Works, page 151:

     It takes courage to be against the drumbeat of war and especially to become a “shield” against violence.

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