Word.ws English Dictionary

march to one's own drum

march to one's own drum is the alternative form of march to the beat of a different drum.

Meaning of march to the beat of a different drum

Verb

march to the beat of a different drum (third-person singular simple present marches to the beat of a different drum, present participle marching to the beat of a different drum, simple past and past participle marched to the beat of a different drum)

  1. (idiomatic) To do things in one's own way regardless of societal norms and conventional expectations.
    • Siegfried and Roy, two nuts from Germany, are out of their wealthy little minds. They live in a mansion whose ceiling is painted like the Sistine Chapel, with either Siegfried or Roy (who can remember?) in place of Adam. Roy has a "meditation chamber" (the rest of us have dressing rooms) furnished...1994 January 10, Penn Jillette, “Las Vegas: Tonight! Miracles, Live!”, in Time

Forms of march to one's own drum

third-person singular presentmarches to one's own drum
present participlemarching to one's own drum
past participlemarched to one's own drum
pastmarched to one's own drum

Questions about march to one's own drum

What is march to one's own drum the alternative form of?
March to one's own drum is the alternative form of march to the beat of a different drum.

Words near march to one's own drum in the dictionary

  1. march past
  2. March Revolution
  3. march to a different beat
  4. march to a different drum
  5. march to a different drummer
  6. march to one's own drum
  7. march to one's own drummer
  8. march to the beat of a different drum
  9. march to the beat of a different drummer
  10. march to the beat of one's own drum
  11. march to the beat of one's own drummer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: march to one's own drum (page history and authors); march to the beat of a different drum (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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