What's the difference between knock and thrum?

Knock


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To drive or be driven against something; to strike against something; to clash; as, one heavy body knocks against another.
  • (v. i.) To strike or beat with something hard or heavy; to rap; as, to knock with a club; to knock on the door.
  • (v. t.) To strike with something hard or heavy; to move by striking; to drive (a thing) against something; as, to knock a ball with a bat; to knock the head against a post; to knock a lamp off the table.
  • (v. t.) To strike for admittance; to rap upon, as a door.
  • (n.) A blow; a stroke with something hard or heavy; a jar.
  • (n.) A stroke, as on a door for admittance; a rap.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Having been knocked out of the League Cup and Cup Winners' Cup before Christmas, they lost an FA Cup fourth-round replay at West Brom on 1 February.
  • (2) It pulled to a halt and a bodyguard got out and knocked me unconscious.
  • (3) More seriously, but no less predictably, the inflaming of sectarianism will have knock-on effects in Syria and Iraq.
  • (4) I knocked for quite some time but there was nobody there.” A neighbour said the family had not been home for “a while”.
  • (5) One day, out of the blue, there's a knock on the door.
  • (6) At 7.40am Lord Feldman, the Conservative party chairman, knocked on the front door of No 10.
  • (7) Indeed, with the pageantry already knocked off the top of the news by reports from Old Trafford, the very idea of a cohesive coalition programme about anything other than cuts looks that bit harder to sustain.
  • (8) Davenport, possibly in a fit of pique at having been knocked out, said playing Mauresmo was like 'playing a guy'.
  • (9) This part will be knocked down next year; they have already started opposite."
  • (10) I see myself in exactly the same situation as I saw myself yesterday, though obviously with the bitter disappointment of the failure of being knocked out.
  • (11) "There's nothing better than when the Grammys can rock out, and to have these artists all together on one stage, doing a number that, when they presented it to us, knocked us out, is going to turn out to be one of those Grammy moments that people talk about for a long time.
  • (12) Hester also pledged that customers from other banks will be repaid for 'knock-on' costs after they were left out of pocket by an IT failure that sent 20m transactions awry.
  • (13) Whether it's voting on the day, knocking on doors, making phone calls or speaking to friends and family, the silent majority should feel confident in speaking up.
  • (14) Cooled by a floor fan, nurses, doctors and support staff in blue scrubs move through the small anteroom next to the isolation ward to juggle the needs of the desperately ill patients inside as a stream of people knock on the canvas door asking for updates on their loved ones.
  • (15) We’ve sent out all the boards and there’s still loads of people flooding in, we don’t know what to do.’ It happened in Leeds North West, too – they started the day, they had so many activists that they went: ‘Right, let’s scrap our whole strategy, we’re going to just print off the electoral register instead’ – and rather than focusing on likely Labour voters, which is what you would normally do, they knocked on all the doors on the electoral register – that’s unheard of.” The seat saw a 14% swing to Labour, overturning a Lib Dem majority of almost 3,000 and replacing it with a 4,000 Labour lead.
  • (16) Offers worth £20m and £26m have been flatly rejected by Everton since mid-July, with a third of around £30m also knocked back last week.
  • (17) A protester is knocked back by a police water cannon as riot police advance towards Gezi Park.
  • (18) Chelsea , however, will not be too concerned if this match is added to the long list of games that is used to knock José Mourinho's ploys of conservatism and, ultimately, it is proven to be a valuable result.
  • (19) You are hunting for signs of the assembly of injuries - a broken nose, knocked-out teeth, fractured eye socket - incurred by falling face-first down a fire escape in Michigan while high on crystal meth, crack cocaine and cheap wine.
  • (20) On election day, we’ll have 6,000 campaign volunteers knocking on doors.

Thrum


Definition:

  • (n.) One of the ends of weaver's threads; hence, any soft, short threads or tufts resembling these.
  • (n.) Any coarse yarn; an unraveled strand of rope.
  • (n.) A threadlike part of a flower; a stamen.
  • (n.) A shove out of place; a small displacement or fault along a seam.
  • (n.) A mat made of canvas and tufts of yarn.
  • (v. t.) To furnish with thrums; to insert tufts in; to fringe.
  • (v. t.) To insert short pieces of rope-yarn or spun yarn in; as, to thrum a piece of canvas, or a mat, thus making a rough or tufted surface.
  • (v. i.) To play rudely or monotonously on a stringed instrument with the fingers; to strum.
  • (v. i.) Hence, to make a monotonous drumming noise; as, to thrum on a table.
  • (v. t.) To play, as a stringed instrument, in a rude or monotonous manner.
  • (v. t.) Hence, to drum on; to strike in a monotonous manner; to thrum the table.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A few hundred feet away, the hospital's medical wards were slowly thrumming to work.
  • (2) But in 1963, when Gloria Steinem went undercover in the New York club for Show magazine, she described a life of swollen feet, drudgery, "demerits" for laddered tights or scruffy tails, and a constant low-level thrum of sexual harassment.
  • (3) Her selected stories, The Atmospheric Railway , are now available in paperback (Vintage, £9.99) In JMcorrect Barrie's novel Sentimental Tommy , Tommy Sandys, a young Scottish boy living in a London slum, has been brought up on his exiled Scottish mother's tales of her home town, Thrums.
  • (4) Despite the chill, the east stand was thrumming with energy thrown off by Tólfan (literally, “12”), the Iceland supporters group, 300 of whom had turned up to watch Strákarnir okkar (“Our Boys”) take on the Netherlands in a Euro 2016 qualifier.
  • (5) For now the wheels are still turning, the production lines thrumming.
  • (6) Two years later, Lineker left English football to play briefly in Japan, just as the Premier League thrummed into gear.
  • (7) After their mother's death, Tommy and his little sister, Elspeth, are sent back to Thrums.
  • (8) The two capitals – Chisinau in Moldova and Tiraspol in Trans-Dniester – couldn't be more different, the former thrumming with traffic and FM radio debate, the latter redolent of a bygone Soviet vision of monolithic order and stability.
  • (9) For over 18 years the affairs of Karachi, the country's largest city and thrumming economic hub, have been run from a shabby office block more than 4,000 miles away in a suburb of north London.
  • (10) The city is a thrumming beehive of middleclass lives, all buzzing with secrets and lies.
  • (11) From the start Trump’s rallies had the air of the tent revival, that same hot thrum of militant exorcism and ecstasy.
  • (12) The city transformed into a thrumming sea of people who had journeyed from across the Americas to witness, pray and rejoice here, producing a dramatic coda to a visit which took the pontiff closer to the centres of US power and history than any of his predecessors.
  • (13) London: the city that ate itself Read more The approach used to be exhilarating and comforting at the same time, the electric thrum of reconnection to the national power source combined with the security of home.
  • (14) He brags endlessly to his friend Shovel (a tough and brutally misused lad) of the beauties and superiority of Thrums.
  • (15) "Think of the pilgrims … If you close your eyes you can almost hear the thrumming of their hooves …" That, I guess, is the mysterious magic of Powell and Pressburger.
  • (16) "The world doesn't understand the crisis in Gaza," adds his brother, Wissam, 35, against the headache-inducing thrum of generators that is part of Gaza's soundtrack.
  • (17) Suttie thrums the heartstrings like a flamenco guitarist.
  • (18) Leftwing outlets, in contrast, thrummed with indignation.
  • (19) Heartbroken, he sobs to Elspeth that he was always boasting to Shovel about Thrums and here he is in Thrums "bouncing" about Shovel.
  • (20) Keyboards thrum, telephones buzz, everyone is in suits.

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