drumbeat

noun

Etymology: From drum + beat.

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.”

3. A repetitive beating sound.

   “This music has a groovy drumbeat that makes me dance!”

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

4. A driving force.

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

   “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.'”