drumbeat

plural drumbeats

1. The beating of a drum.
2. The sound of a beating drum.

   This is not the drumbeat of a single drummer leading a charge.

   2015, Tom Liam Lynch, The Hidden Role of Software in Educational Research, page 54

3. broadlyA repetitive beating sound.

   This music has a groovy drumbeat that makes me dance!

   3 more examples

   The drumbeat of roadside bombs and suicide attacks continued all over the 2d Brigade, 10th Mountain Division's area of operations.

   2010, Dale Andrade, Surging South of Baghdad, page 108

   Rycant stood close enough to catch his words despite the drumbeat of rain on the thick leaves above their heads, but only Rectoria picked up the note of relief.

   2015, Alison Gardiner, The Serpent of Eridor, page 113

   What does the drumbeat of your heart say?

   2020, Mark David Gerson, The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write

4. figurativelyA driving force.

   We can hear the drumbeat of history, right in our own time.

   2005, R. C. Leonard, Silence of the Drums, page 66

   5 more examples

   Nevertheless, greatness rarely receives public approval, because most people spend their lives goose-stepping to the drumbeat of economic necessity.

   1996, Paulette D. Kilmer, The Fear of Sinking, page 48

   On a more scholarly level the drumbeat of need was signalled too: as when the newly appointed headmaster of the Merchant Taylors' School, Richard Mulcaster, declared: 'it would be a thing verie praiseworthy ... if som one learned and as laborious a man wold gather all the wordes which we vse in our English tung ... into one dictionarie.'

   2004, Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything

   While the partisan wrangling annoyed Clinton, it was the drumbeat of attacks on his character and the constant investigations of his administration that bothered him most of all.

   2008, Steven M. Gillon, The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation

   It takes courage to be against the drumbeat of war and especially to become a “shield” against violence.

   2012, J. Frederick Arment, The Elements of Peace: How Nonviolence Works, page 151

   The drumbeat of warning that advanced AI could kill us all has mostly quieted; the “doomers” have been marginalized, now used by AI’s ruling class as a punch line. Yet even the most upbeat AI leaders are quick to offer kernels of warning.

   2025 December 11, Charlie Campbell, Andrew R. Chow and Billy Perrigo, “The Architects of AI Are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year”, in Time