Word.ws English Dictionary

march to the beat of a different drummer

march to the beat of a different drummer 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 the beat of a different drummer

third-person singular presentmarches to the beat of a different drummer
present participlemarching to the beat of a different drummer
past participlemarched to the beat of a different drummer
pastmarched to the beat of a different drummer

Questions about march to the beat of a different drummer

What is march to the beat of a different drummer the alternative form of?
March to the beat of a different drummer is the alternative form of march to the beat of a different drum.

Words near march to the beat of a different drummer in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: march to the beat of a different drummer (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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