drone

See also: Drone

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:

drone

Wikipedia

drone bee

MQ-9 Reaper drone, a military unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)

MD4-200 quadcopter in flight, a small type of drone

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɹəʊn/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /dɹoʊn/
Rhymes: -əʊn

Etymology 1

From 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 *dʰrēn- (“bee, drone, hornet”).

Cognate with:

Dutch dar (“male bee or wasp”),
Low German drone (“drone”),
German Drohne, dialectal German Dräne, Trehne, Trene (“drone”),
Danish 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.^[1]

Noun

drone (plural drones)

A male ant, bee or wasp, which does not work but can fertilize the queen.
- 1697, Virgil, “The Fourth Book of the Georgics”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC:
  All with united force combine to drive / The lazy drones from the laborious hive.
(now rare) Someone who does not work; a lazy person, an idler.
- c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene v]:
  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
  To one what I would have him help to waste
  His borrowed purse. […]
- 1624, John Smith, Generall Historie, Kupperman, published 1988, page 117:
  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.
- 1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC:
  by living as a drone, to be an unprofitable or unworthy member of so learned and noble a society
(metonymically): One who performs menial or tedious work.
Synonym: drudge
A remotely operated vehicle:
1. (metonymically): An aircraft operated by remote control, especially an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV).
  Synonyms: UAV, UAS
  
  Hyponym: quadcopter
  
  Several images of the compound were obtained via a drone overflight.
  
  One team member launched a camera drone over the Third Pole.
  - 1948 September, “Air Force Day”, in U.S. Air Services‎^[2], page 6:
    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 controls. A radio controlled drone, it will make the journey with its mother ship, another Fortress, as part of the Experimental Guided Missiles Group contribution to the demonstration.
  - 2012 October 25, Scott Shane, “Drone Strikes to Be Investigated”, in New York Times‎^[3]:
    The United Nations is setting up a unit to investigate American drone strikes and other _targeted killings of terrorist suspects, Ben Emmerson, the United Nations special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, said Thursday.
  - 2012 December 1, “An internet of airborne things”, in The Economist‎^[4], volume 405, number 8813, page 3 (Technology Quarterly):
    A farmer could place an order for a new tractor part by text message and pay for it by mobile money-transfer. A supplier many miles away would then take the part to the local matternet station for airborne dispatch via drone.
  - 2013 June 7, Ed Pilkington, “‘Killer robots’ should be banned in advance, UN told”, in The Guardian Weekly‎^[5], volume 188, number 26, page 6:
    In his submission to the UN, [Christof] Heyns points to the experience of drones. Unmanned aerial vehicles were intended initially only for surveillance, and their use for offensive purposes was prohibited, yet once strategists realised their perceived advantages as a means of carrying out _targeted killings, all objections were swept out of the way.
  - 2017 October 17, Christina Caron, “After Drone Hits Plane in Canada, New Fears About Air Safety”, in New York Times‎^[6]:
    In April, as an Air Canada Jazz flight was landing at Trudeau Airport, a drone came so close the pilot was able to identify it as a quadcopter.
  - 2020 May 20, Paul Stephen, “NR beats floods to secure tracks to Drax”, in Rail, page 58, photo caption:
    NR made extensive use of drones, helicopters and a team of divers to inspect the flood-damaged section of embankment that forced the closure of one of the lines into Drax from February 6-April 20.
  - 2021, Francis A. Boyle, World Politics, Human Rights, and International Law, page 9:
    Indeed, referring to his drone murder extermination campaign Obama bragged: "I'm really good at killing people!" Those are Obama's own words!
2. (expansion of the sense "an unmanned or remotely operated aircraft"): (chiefly military) Any remotely-operated vehicle (ROV), such as a tank or boat, especially when multiple such vehicles are operated from a larger vessel.
  Synonym: ROV
  - 1946, Seventh United States Army in France and Germany, Report of Operations‎^[7], volume 1, page 73:
    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.
  - 1968 July, “Long-Distance Crews”, in All Hands‎^[8], number 618, page 27:
    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 of up to five miles using tracking radar.
  - 1968 September, “Desert Tank Corps”, in All Hands‎^[9], number 620, page 13:
    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.
  - 1984 March 1, UPI, “Libya owns drone boats, Navy says”, in Eugene Register-Guard‎^[10], page 2:
    "Libya obtained a remote controlled explosive boat system consisting of 30-knot drone boats packed with high explosives controlled from a cabin cruiser type craft," Butts told the seapower and strategic and critical materials subcomittee.
(Uganda) A Toyota HiAce or a similar van, especially one used by Ugandan state agents to kidnap opposition members.
- 2021 February 4, Alex Mugasha, “Why Uganda's security agencies have fallen in love with the "Drone" van”, in Nile Post‎^[11]:
  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 commercial purposes.
- 2021 February 4, Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, “Horror inside a kidnap drone”, in The Observer‎^[12]:
  He has been arrested several times, transported in drone vans and brutalized in various detention facilities.
- 2021 March 3, Liam Taylor, “They came in plainclothes with guns: 'Abducted' by Uganda's army”, in Al Jazeera‎^[13]:
  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 Daily Monitor newspaper, dubbed it the #WheelsOfSteal and rendered it as a skull: brake lights dripping blood, its front grille a row of teeth, and hands plastered behind its tinted back windows, pleading for help.
- 2022 October 2, Sam Waswa, “UPDF Probes Drone Raid at Journalist's Home”, in Chimp Reports‎^[14]:
  Earlier this week, Deputy Speaker of Parliament Thomas Tayebwa summoned the Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja together with the Ministers of Security and Internal Affairs and parliamentary whips to address the said return of drones on the streets.
- 2022 October 20, Albert K Awedoba, Andreas Mehler, Benedikt Kamski, David Sebudubudu, Africa Yearbook, volume 18, →ISBN, page 419:
  A minibus van, often numberless and dubbed the 'drone', gained notoriety for kidnaps and disappearances.
(chiefly Internet slang, derogatory) A person without the ability to think critically and independently, especially one who follows a group blindly; a non-player character.
- 2009 December 18, Benway (original non-Zionist), “Shocking Jewish faggot property pimp attack on Australia”, in aus.politics‎^[15] (Usenet):
  The billionaire-friendly media drones and frenzied
  multiculturalist politicians are imposing
  "vibrant" third world social violence onto
  Australians, and Australians don't get to vote
  against this "bipartisan" conspiracy. The
  hyperactive globalist politicians and media drones
  might find themselves facing firing squads if they
  don't change their corrupt ways.
- 2011 September 2, corella, “What does it mean when gibbering media drones say that grotesque Asian-style "Stack and Pack" slums and plague immigration are vibrant?”, in aus.politics‎^[16] (Usenet):
- 2017 January 19, The Party Of Trump (The Party For Winners), “Re: Clinton Cash”, in alt.checkmate‎^[17] (Usenet):
  Instead, you got into lockstep with all the other hive-mind libtard drones and voted for the slimy corrupt scumbag bitch who was under *two* active Congressional investigations (a first in history, BTW), Hitlery Clinton.

Usage notes

In sense “unmanned aircraft”, primarily used informally of military aircraft or consumer radio controlled quadcopters, without precise definition.^[1] The application of the term drone to unmanned aircraft, (and subsequently to other unmanned vehicles) has been traced to British military jargon of the mid 1930s. The most common aircraft used for British naval gunnery _target practice at that time was a pilotless, radio controlled biplane produced by the de Havilland Aircraft Company named the DH.82 Queen Bee. Despite being called the Queen Bee, which, of course, is a female bee, by its maker, these aircraft came to be known as "drones", a particular name in entomology for a male bee or wasp, in reference to the fact that, in a manner similar to the fact of a drone honeybee dying after performing its essential function during a nuptial flight, the DH.82 was expected to "give its life" (that is, to be destroyed) as a result of the performance of its own essential function as a gunnery _target.

Hyponyms

(military): kamikaze drone

Derived terms

Descendants

→ Asturian: dron
→ Spanish: dron
→ Italian: drone
→ Punjabi: ਡ੍ਰੋਨ (ḍron)
→ Polish: dron
→ Portuguese: drone

Translations

male bee

Afrikaans: dar (af)
Albanian: brumbull (sq) m, djerraditëz (sq) m, trëntor m
Arabic: يَعْسُوب (ar) m (yaʕsūb)
Azerbaijani: erkək arı
Belarusian: тру́цень m (trúcjenʹ)
Bulgarian: тъ́ртей (bg) m (tǎ́rtej)
Burmese: ပျားထီး (my) (pya:hti:)
Catalan: abellot (ca) m
Chinese:
Mandarin: 雄蜂 (zh) (xióngfēng)
Czech: trubec (cs) m
Danish: drone (da) c
Dutch: dar (nl) m, (archaic) drone (nl) m
Esperanto: virabelo
Estonian: lesk (et)
Finnish: kuhnuri (fi)
French: faux bourdon (fr)
Galician: abázcaro (gl) m, abáboro (gl), abellón (gl), franco (gl) m
German: Drohne (de) f
Greek: κηφήνας (el) m (kifínas)
Ancient: κηφήν m (kēphḗn), θρῶναξ m (thrônax)
Hungarian: here (hu)
Indonesian: lebah jantan
Interlingua: ape mascule
Irish: ladrann m, crónán m
Italian: fuco (it) m
Japanese: 雄蜂 (おばち, obachi)
Korean: 숫벌 (sutbeol), 수벌 (subeol)
Kurdish:
Northern Kurdish: nêrehing m, pîrox m
Latvian: trans (lv) m
Lithuanian: tranas, trãnas m
Macedonian: трут m (trut)
Malayalam: ആൺതേനീച്ച (āṇtēnīcca)
Middle English: drane
Norwegian:
Bokmål: drone m

Nynorsk: drone m
Old English: drān f
Polish: truteń (pl) m
Portuguese: zangão (pt) m, zângão (pt) m
Romanian: trântor (ro) m
Russian: тру́тень (ru) m (trútenʹ)
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: тру̑т m

Roman: trȗt (sh) m
Slovak: trúd (sk) m
Slovene: trọ̑t (sl) m
Spanish: zángano (es) m
Swedish: drönare (sv)
Tibetan: སྦྲང་མ་ཕོ (sbrang ma pho), ཕོ་སྦྲང (pho sbrang)
Turkish: saka (tr), bodat, hordan, haradan (tr), boruzan, puları
Ukrainian: тру́тень m (trútenʹ)
Welsh: gwenynen segur m

unmanned aircraft

Afrikaans: hommeltuig (af)
Arabic: مُسَيَّرَة f (musayyara), طَائِرَة بِدُونِ طَيَّار f (ṭāʔira(t) bidūni ṭayyār)
Hijazi Arabic: درون f (drōn)
Armenian: անօդաչու (hy) (anōdačʻu)
Azerbaijani: pilotsuz uçuş aparatı, PUA, dron
Belarusian: беспіло́тны лята́льны апара́т (be) m (bjespilótny ljatálʹny aparát), беспіло́тнік m (bjespilótnik), бесьпілётнік m (bjesʹpiljótnik), дрон m (dron)
Bulgarian: дрон m (dron)
Burmese: ဒရုန်း (da.run:)
Catalan: VANT m, dron (ca) m
Chinese:
Mandarin: 無人航空載具 / 无人航空载具 (wúrén hángkōng zàijù), 無人飛機 / 无人飞机 (wúrén fēijī), 無人機 / 无人机 (zh) (wúrénjī), 無人駕駛飛機 / 无人驾驶飞机 (wúrén jiàshǐ fēijī)
Czech: bezpilotní letoun m, dron (cs) m
Danish: drone (da) c, dronefly n
Dutch: drone (nl)
Esperanto: droneo, spavo, flugroboto, senpilota aviadilo
Estonian: droon (et)
Finnish: lennokki (fi), drooni (fi), drone (fi)
French: drone (fr) m
Georgian: დრონი (droni)
German: Drohne (de) f
Hebrew: מל״ט (ML"T), מזל״ט (MZL"T), כטב״ם (KTB"M), כטמ״ם (KTM"M) רחפן (/ʁaχˈfan/)
Hindi: मानव रहित विमान m (mānav rahit vimān)
Hungarian: drón (hu)
Indonesian: dron
Irish: drón m
Italian: drone (it) m
Japanese: 無人航空機 (むじんこうくうき, mujin kōkūki), ドローン (ja) (dorōn), 無人飛行機 (むじんひこうき, mujin hikōki)
Kazakh: ұшқышсыз ұшу аппараты (ūşqyşsyz ūşu apparaty), дрон (dron)
Khmer: ដ្រូន (droun)
Korean: 드론 (ko) (deuron), 무인항공기(無人航空機) (mu'inhanggonggi), 무인기(無人機) (mu'in'gi)
Kyrgyz: учкучсуз учуучу аппарат (uckucsuz ucuucu apparat), дрон (dron)
Latvian: bezpilota lidaparāts m
Lithuanian: bepilotis orlaivis m
Macedonian: беспи́лотник m (bespílotnik), беспи́лотно ле́тало n (bespílotno létalo), дрон (mk) m (dron)
Maori: matatopa
Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
Norwegian:
Bokmål: drone m, dronefly n

Nynorsk: drone m, dronefly n
Persian: پهپاد (fa) (pahpâd)
Polish: samolot bezzałogowy m, dron (pl) m, bezzałogowiec m, bezpilotowiec m
Portuguese: drone (pt) m
Romanian: dronă f
Russian: беспило́тный лета́тельный аппара́т (ru) m (bespilótnyj letátelʹnyj apparát), БПЛА (ru) m (BPLA), дрон (ru) m (dron), беспило́тник (ru) m (bespilótnik)
Scottish Gaelic: dròn m
Serbo-Croatian:
Cyrillic: беспилотна летелица f, беспилотна летјелица f, БПЛ m, дрон m

Roman: bespilotna letelica f, bespilotna letjelica f, BPL m, dron m
Slovak: bezpilotné lietadlo n
Slovene: brezpilotno letalo n, dron (sl) m
Spanish: dron (es) m
Swahili: ndege nyuki, droni
Swedish: drönare (sv) c
Tajik: паҳпод (pahpod), дрон (dron)
Thai: อากาศยานไร้คนขับ (aa-gàat-sà-yaan-rái-kon-kàp), โดรน (droon)
Tibetan: མི་མེད་འཕུར་གྲུ (mi med 'phur gru)
Turkish: dron, insansız uçak, çamcarı
Ukrainian: безпіло́тний літа́льний апара́т m (bezpilótnyj litálʹnyj aparát), безпіло́тник m (bezpilótnyk), дрон m (dron)
Urdu: please add this translation if you can
Uzbek: uchuvchisiz uchish apparati, dron
Vietnamese: máy bay không người lái
Welsh: drôn m

any remotely operated vehicle

Verb

drone (third-person singular simple present drones, present participle droning, simple past and past participle droned)

(transitive, colloquial) To kill with a missile fired by unmanned aircraft.
- 2014, Colin Campbell, “Bill Ayers To Obama: 'Stop Droning People'”, in Business Insider‎^[18]:
  "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 deserve universal healthcare? Seriously."
- 2016, David Moye, “Trevor Noah: If Trump Is Elected, He’ll Wage ‘Warsuits’”, in Huffington Post‎^[19]:
  “He won’t be waging wars all the world ― he’ll be waging ‘warsuits,’” Noah said. “Droning people with subpoenas all over the globe.”
- 2018, David Weigel, “The new ‘Dr. No’: Rep. Justin Amash, marooned in Congress”, in Washington Post‎^[20]:
  “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 due process. Yeah. When some libertarians talk about the great accomplishments we’re seeing on foreign policy, I don’t know what they’re talking about. Reaching out to these guys is one thing, but you have to move down the court. [Trump] actually made it harder for us to have a good relationship with Russia.”

Derived terms

droningly

Etymology 2

From Middle English drounen (“to roar, bellow”), from Proto-West Germanic *drunnjan, from Proto-Germanic *drunjaną (“to drone, roar, make a sound”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰer- (“to roar, hum, drone”).

Cognate with Scots drune (“to drone, moan, complain”), Dutch dreunen (“to drone, boom, thud”), Low German drönen (“to drone, buzz, hum”), German dröhnen (“to roar, boom, rumble”), Danish drøne (“to roar, boom, peel out”), Swedish dröna (“to low, bellow, roar”), Icelandic drynja (“to roar”).

This entry needs a sound clip exemplifying the definition.

Verb

drone (third-person singular simple present drones, present participle droning, simple past and past participle droned)

To produce a low-pitched hum or buzz.
To speak in a monotone.

Derived terms

drone on

Translations

to produce a low-pitched hum or buzz

Finnish: hurista (fi)
French: bourdonner (fr), vrombir (fr)
German: brummen (de)
Ingrian: pörissä
Maori: rōria
Tibetan: ཟིར་སྒྲ་རྒྱག (zir sgra rgyag)

to speak in a monotone way

Dutch: ^{(please verify)} brommen (nl), ^{(please verify)} eentonig spreken
German: ^{(please verify)} eintönig sprechen, ^{(please verify)} leiern (de)
Interlingua: parlar monotonemente
Italian: parlare monotonamente
Japanese: ^{(please verify)} 単調に話す (tanchouni hanasu)
Polish: mówić monotonnie
Portuguese: falar monotonamente
Sicilian: murmurijari, ciarmulijari
Tibetan: ཟིར་ཟིར་ཟེར (zir zir zer)

Noun

drone (plural drones)

A low-pitched hum or buzz.
- 1908, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows:
  He chanted as he flew and the car responded with sonorous drone.
(music) One of the fixed-pitch pipes on a bagpipe.
(music, uncountable) A genre of music that uses repeated lengthy droning sounds.
A humming or deep murmuring sound.
- 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, (please specify either |part=I or II):
  The monotonous drone of the wheel.

Translations

a low-pitched hum or buzz

Bulgarian: бръмчене (brǎmčene)
Dutch: brommen (nl), dreunen (nl)
Finnish: hymistä, hyristä (fi), surista (fi), hurista (fi)
Galician: zunir, zoar (gl), rombar, retrovexar, zonzonear
German: Brummen (de) n
Interlingua: susurrar
Irish: andord m
Japanese: ^{(please verify)} 単調な低音を出す (たんちょうなていおんをだす, tanchouna teionwo dasu)
Macedonian: брчи (brči), брмчи (brmči)
Maori: rōria
Polish: buczeć (pl), brzęczeć (pl)
Portuguese: zumbir (pt)
Spanish: zumbar (es), zumbido (es) m
Tibetan: ཟིར་སྒྲ (zir sgra), ཟིར་ཟིར (zir zir)
Turkish: vızıldamak (tr), cızırdamak (tr)

hum or buzz

Bulgarian: бръмчене n (brǎmčene)
Dutch: gebrom (nl) n
Finnish: humina (fi), surina
French: bourdonnement (fr)
German: Dröhnen (de) n
Interlingua: susurro
Italian: ronzio (it), brusio (it)
Japanese: ブンブン (bunbun)
Macedonian: брчење n (brčenje), брмчење n (brmčenje)
Maori: rōria
Polish: buczenie n, brzęczenie (pl) n
Portuguese: zumbido (pt) m
Russian: жужжа́ние (ru) n (žužžánije)
Spanish: zumbido (es) m, murmullo (es), soniquete m
Tibetan: ཟིར་སྒྲ (zir sgra), ཟིར་ཟིར (zir zir)
Turkish: vızıltı (tr), cızırtı (tr)

fixed-pitch pipe in bagpipe

Albanian: buçallë (sq) f
Bulgarian: ручило (bg) n (ručilo)
Dutch: bourdon (nl) m
Finnish: bordunapilli (fi)
Galician: roncón m
German: Basspfeife f
Macedonian: брчало n (brčalo)
Polish: piszczałka burdonowa f, burdon m, bąk (pl) m
Swedish: bordun (sv) c

drudge

Finnish: työläinen (fi)
French: idiot utile (fr), dupe (fr)
Indonesian: dengung (id)
Italian: gonzo (it), zimbello (it)
Spanish: timado (es)
Turkish: köle (tr)

Etymology 3

Noun

drone (uncountable)

(UK, slang) The drug mephedrone.
Synonym: meow

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 Kelsey D. Atherton (2013 March 7) “Flying Robots 101: Everything You Need To Know About Drones”, in Popular Science‎^[1], archived from the original on 2013-03-10

Anagrams

nerdo, orned, Doren, redon, Doner, doner, ronde, Roden, renod

Danish

Danish Wikipedia has an article on:

Drone (insekt)

Wikipedia ^da

Danish Wikipedia has an article on:

drone

Wikipedia ^da

Etymology

From Middle Low German drone (sense 1), and English drone (sense 2).

Noun

drone c (singular definite dronen, plural indefinite droner)

a drone (male bee)
a drone (radio-controlled pilotless aircraft)

Declension

Declension of drone

common gender	Singular		Plural
common gender	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
nominative	drone	dronen	droner	dronerne
genitive	drones	dronens	droners	dronernes

Dutch