Meaning
To expel someone from a group, organization, or profession with deliberate ceremony and public disgrace; the metaphor comes from the old military punishment of dismissing a disgraced soldier from camp to the beat of drums. It stresses humiliation and ritual, not merely removal. Much stronger than fired or expelled; it implies disgrace and often public ritual, so reserve it for shameful removals, not neutral departures. Regional use: General English.
Origin
Rooted in a real punishment: soldiers were dishonourably expelled to drumbeat, in the British Army usually to the Rogue's March, a tune scholars trace to a Cavalier taunt song of 1642 and which survives in print in a fife tutor of 1756. In the ceremony the offender was paraded, his buttons and facings stripped, the sentence read, and he was marched out between the ranks, sometimes led by a halter; American forces used it from the Revolution - Moses Pickett, per General Orders of 15 September 1775 - through the Civil War, with shaved heads and placards, and it remained in US regulations in 1915; the last US Marine was drummed out in 1962, after which the commandant halted the practice. Figurative use came early: Pope's Moral Essays (1731-33) says the cheat Francis Chartres was drummed out of the regiment, and Amory's Life of John Buncle (1766) wants offenders drummed out of society.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- drum out of the corps
- drummed out of society
- drummed out of the regiment
Usage Examples
- The general was drummed out of the corps once the inquiry exposed years of falsified field reports.
- Leak the committee's papers and you will be drummed out of the corps before the week is out, mark my words.
- Investors watched the once-famous trader being drummed out of the profession, his licence revoked within minutes.