drumstick
(ˈdrʌmstɪk)
1. a. The stick having a terminal knob or padded head with which a drum is beaten.
| 1589 Nottingham Rec. IV. 226 For iiij. gunstickes and twoe drumme stickes. a 1691 Boyle Wks. III. 25 The drum-stick falling upon the drum makes a percussion of the air, and puts that fluid body into an undulating motion. 1864 Engel Mus. Anc. Nat. 219 The Egyptians had also straight drum-sticks with a handle, and a knob at the end. |
† b. Applied to a person. Obs.
| 1633 Marmion Fine Companion iii. iv, What? I will not offend thee, my good drumstick. |
2. transf. (in reference to shape.) a. The lower joint of the leg of a dressed fowl.
| 1764 Foote Mayor of G. i. Wks. 1799 I. 173 She always helps me herself to the tough drumsticks of turkies. 1831 Moore Summer Fête 825 Since Dinner..Put Supper and her fowls so white, Legs, wings, and drumsticks, all to flight. 1848 Thackeray Bk. Snobs xxxii, A finger, as knotted as a turkey's drumstick. |
b. A popular appellation of the Knapweed (Centaurea nigra and C. Scabiosa).
| 1878–86 in Britten & Holland Plant-n. |
c. ‘The colloquial name in the Madras Presidency for the long slender pods of the Moringa pterygosperma, the Horse-Radish Tree of Bengal.’
d. U.S. The stilt-sandpiper.
e. Cytology. An appendage of the nucleus of a polymorphonuclear leucocyte, composed of sex chromatin and characteristic of females.
| 1954 Davidson & Smith in Brit. Med. Jrnl. 3 July 6 A solitary chromatin nodule..becomes separated off from the main nuclear lobes in a proportion of the neutrophils... This characteristic ‘drumstick’, which is just visible at ×90 magnification, has to be distinguished from other appendages which occur in both sexes. 1964 L. Martin Clinical Endocrinol. (ed. 4) vi. 204 The drumstick consists of an ovoid chromatin mass of 1·5 µ diameter connected to the nucleus by a thin chromatin thread. 1966 W. A. Davidson in K. L. Moore Sex Chromatin iii. 69 The drumsticks which have been identified in animals appear to be similar in form and size to those in man. |
3. Comb., as drumstick-shaped adj.; also drumstick-tree, Cassia Sieberiana, so called from the shape of its pods, known in Sierra Leone as monkey drumsticks.
| 1831 Don Dichlamyd. Pl. I. s.v. Cassia Sieberiana. 1866 Treas. Bot., Drumstick Tree, Cathartocarpus conspicua. 1893 Fortn. Rev. Jan. 113 All forms of tetanus..are due to..the drumstick-shaped bacillus of Nicolaier. |