thrum

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

Imitative.

thrum (plural thrums)

1. A thrumming sound; a hum or vibration.
   • 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. (figuratively) 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

From Middle English throm from Old English tunge-þrum from Proto-Germanic *þrumą. Cognate of Old Norse thrǫmr (“edge, brim”) and German Trumm.

• 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 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 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.
   • Quarles

     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