Music. a bowl-shaped percussion instrument common in the West Indies, made from a steel barrel divided into sections producing different notes when struck.
- Also called steel pan.
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use steel drum in a sentence
On it, you wrote down whatever you hoped for the coming year, then cast it into a big steel drum in the center of the yard.
At half-past twelve at night a prolonged tattoo on the little steel drum!Young Blood | E. W. Hornung
Twenty feet before him stood the steel drum round which the endless cable worked.Dutch Courage and Other Stories | Jack London
In the tube, the weapon sounded like a firecracker going off in a steel drum.The Sex Life of the Gods | Michael Knerr
There was only a fifty-gallon steel drum used as a spare fuel supply.The Pirates of Shan | Harold Leland Goodwin
The dogged plodder at the desk endured other heartburnings of which the little steel drum beat the signal.Young Blood | E. W. Hornung