thrum

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /θɹʌm/

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• (US) IPA^(key): /θɹʌm/
• Rhymes: -ʌm

Imitative.

thrum (plural thrums)

1. A thrumming sound; a hum or vibration.
   • 2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian‎:

     a profusion of insects, which produced a continuous thrum

   • 1955, Elizabeth Bowen, A World of Love, Chapter 2:

     Pungent sweat and heatedly trodden grass, fumes of tea and porter, thrum of hooves from the paddock, the strikings-up and dyings-down of the band all fused into an extreme for Antonia, whose own senses, boatful, stood up to it.

2. (figurative) A spicy taste; a tang.
   • 2014 October 25, Jeff Gordinier, “In search of the perfect taco”, in T: The New York Times Style Magazine (international edition)‎, page 100:

     The trailblazing Oaxacan chef Alejandro Ruiz […] has spiked this black-bean sauce with a hidden depth charge of flavor: patches of foliage from a local avocado tree. The leaves electrify the sauce with an unexpected thrum of black licorice.

thrum (third-person singular simple present thrums, present participle thrumming, simple past and past participle thrummed)

1. To cause a steady rhythmic vibration, usually by plucking.

   She watched as he thrummed the guitar strings absently.

2. To make a monotonous drumming noise.

   to thrum on a table

   • 1957, Jack Kerouac, chapter 8, in On the Road, Viking Press, OCLC 43419454, part 3:

     They were hardly seated, and I had hardly waved good-by to Denver, before he was off, the big motor thrumming with immense birdlike power.

From Middle English thrum, throm (> Anglo-French trome), from Old English *þrum (found in tungeþrum (“ligament of the tongue”)) from Proto-Germanic *þrumą. Cognate with German Trumm and Old Norse thrǫmr (“edge, brim”).

• thrumb

thrum (plural thrums)

1. The ends of the warp threads in a loom which remain unwoven attached to the loom when the web is cut.
2. (chiefly in the plural) A fringe made of such threads.
3. Any short piece of leftover thread or yarn; a tuft or tassel.
4. (botany) A threadlike part of a flower; a stamen.
5. (botany) A tuft, bundle, or fringe of any threadlike structures, as hairs on a leaf, fibers of a root.
6. (anatomy) A bundle of minute blood vessels, a plexus.
7. (nautical, chiefly in the plural) Small pieces of rope yarn used for making mats or mops.
8. (nautical) A mat made of canvas and tufts of yarn.
9. (mining) A shove out of place; a small displacement or fault along a seam.

thrum (not comparable)

1. Made of or woven from thrum.
   • 1768, Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy, "The Husband: Paris"

     In Paris, there are scarce two orders of beings more different: for the legislative and executive powers of the shop not resting in the husband, he seldom comes there:—in some dark and dismal room behind, he sits commerce-less, in his thrum nightcap, the same rough son of Nature that Nature left him.

thrum (third-person singular simple present thrums, present participle thrumming, simple past and past participle thrummed)

1. To furnish with thrums; to insert tufts in; to fringe.
   • 1644-1646, Francis Quarles, Boanerges and Barnabas—Wine and Oyle for […] afflicted Soules

     are we born to thrum caps or pick straw?

2. (nautical) To insert short pieces of rope-yarn or spun yarn in.

   to thrum a piece of canvas, or a mat, thus making a rough or tufted surface

• murth