1. A musical instrument of percussion consisting of a hollow hemisphere of brass or copper, over the edge of which parchment is stretched and tuned to a definite note: cf. DRUM sb.1 1.
[1554. Machyn, Diary (Camden), 76. Thrumpets … and drumes mad of ketylles.]
1602. Shaks., Ham., I. iv. 11. The kettle Drum and Trumpet thus bray out The triumph of his Pledge.
1730. Fielding, Tom Thumb, II. iv. A noise, Great as the kettledrums of twenty armies.
1844. Regul. & Ord. Army, 30. No Trumpet to sound, or Kettle-Drum to beat.
attrib. 1874. T. Hardy, Far fr. Madding Crowd, I. 68. His head being dandled up and down on the bed of the waggon like a kettledrum-stick.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 6 Sept., 4/3. The kettledrum boy plays his incessant pom-pom-pom.
† 2. = KETTLEDRUMMER. Obs.
1542. Sir T. Seymour, Lett. to Hen. VIII., in St. Papers, IX. 501. The captaynes that your Heynes wolde retayne, the dromes and fyffes, the ketyl dromes.
a. 1548. Hall, Chron., Hen. VIII., 239 b. Trompettes … twelve in nombre besyde two kettle Drommes on horsebacke.
1669. Lond. Gaz., No. 4012/3. 6. Trumpets and 2. Kettle-Drums in rich Liveries.
1705. Vanbrugh, Confed., I. ii. The rogue had a kettledrum to his father.
1755. Mem. Capt. P. Drake, I. xv. 143. One Morgrigg, a Kettle Drum to the Queen’s Life-guard.
3. colloq. An afternoon tea-party on a large scale.
A punning term, implying that the gathering was a smaller affair than the usual ‘drum’ (see DRUM sb.1 10) and associating it with the tea-kettle.
1861. Times, 1 July, 12/4. Then the 5 o’clock tea, the sort of little assembly so happily called ‘kettledrum.’
1888. Lady, 25 Oct., 374/1. We ask them to afternoon tea, or have kettledrums at Le Repos.
