(v. t. & i.) To play on an instrument of music, or as on an instrument, in an unskillful or noisy way; to thrum; as, to strum a piano.
Example Sentences:
(1) Using a simple line-up of strummed guitar, bass and drums, he drawled, and then sang, his way through a story about a train driver fooling the inspector on a toll gate outside New Orleans.
(2) To most teenage girls, Theresa May standing on the steps of No 10 doesn’t mean much to you, but Bieber asking “what better way to fight evil than with love?” before strumming his way into a heartfelt acoustic set will.
(3) "As long as there's one strum of a guitar somewhere, you're all right."
(4) "Each time I see a close-up of Victorino, I think that he has got the funkiest beard that I have seen in this World Cup (Rigobert Song's blonde dreads and beard were a bit too 'Neptune' - Copyright 'Lawro' - for me)," strums Khalid Majid.
(5) Orpheus, the great musician of myth, sits at its centre strumming a lyre, while a fox leaps at his feet.
(6) Inside the museum's hall, lined with giant totem poles, mounties genially posed for photographs with the new citizens while the Canadian air force's string quartet gently strummed the theme from Desert Island Discs like a palm court orchestra – a strange choice as desert islands are one thing Canada lacks.
(7) The interplay between Grant's thumping bass, Perkins's jittery lead guitar and Cash's choked strumming was, in its way, as revolutionary as anything Elvis Presley (Obituary, August 17 1977) or Carl Perkins (Obituary, January 20 1998) would accomplish with Sun.
(8) "This is a very historic day," he has just told his congregation, speaking into a microphone as a three-piece band strums gently in the background.
(9) Many city tours are either generic, big-group walks – in which you are fed dry facts with no particular theme – or super-cheesy, “we’re-not-like-the-other-tours” experiences, where you are guided by someone wearing a trilby and strumming a ukelele while telling tales of local cult legends.
(10) In the film, one docker strums the song Joe Hill on his guitar, while another explains that Hill’s famous line was delivered when he was facing the firing squad after being framed for murder.
(11) Bill (now played by Ciarán Hinds) is just out of jail and keen to make peace with his estranged family, while Joy (Shirley Henderson) is still strumming her guitar and lamenting her troubles with men.
(12) Balladeers who have strummed righteously to songs of solidarity and working-class unity become cheerleaders for the destruction of these very values.
(13) And Jean Genie was from Jean Genet – I was strumming this John Lee Hooker riff on a bus and David said, "Pass the guitar over here", reworked the riff and wrote Jean Genie just like that.
(14) A lot of those bands didn't exist properly, of course – they just got together and strummed and banged and hooted – it was off the wall!
(15) Those intimate, murmured lyrics, the sleepy strums, tricks that work so well on record – they're not best suited to open fields, wind-whipped marquees, audiences that don't always fully invest.
(16) This is strumming on Francis' novelty territory, I fear musical instruments at dawn.
(17) And Country Joe McDonald duly strums the opening chords to the most celebrated anthem to come out the San Francisco Summer of Love four decades ago, broadcast to the world from the stage at Woodstock two years later.
(18) The shtick: Nerdy but perky Canadian comic DeAnne Smith talks lesbianism and intelligent design, strums a uke and compulsively deconstructs her own act.
(19) The localization of endogenous peroxidase was studied in human parotid and submandibular glands using the medium of Strum & Karnovsky either at pH 7 or at pH 8.3, after a short fixation of the tissues with a low concentration of glutaraldehyde.
(20) And yet, later that day, we find him sitting in the park outside, strumming a guitar with his sister.
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.