Word.ws English Dictionary

march to the beat of one's own drummer

march to the beat of one's own 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 one's own drummer

third-person singular presentmarches to the beat of one's own drummer
present participlemarching to the beat of one's own drummer
past participlemarched to the beat of one's own drummer
pastmarched to the beat of one's own drummer

Questions about march to the beat of one's own drummer

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

Words near march to the beat of one's own drummer in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: march to the beat of one's own 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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “march to the beat of one's own drummer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/march_to_the_beat_of_one%27s_own_drummer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.