Word Nerding: I hate the word “drone” and here’s why.

Mephisto Mori/ September 7, 2015/ Video Games/ 0 comments

The following is another of those times I’m using my website to trunk something I wrote on Facebook. It has absolutely nothing to do with video games or even geek culture. It is simple word nerdery and I apologize. I’m only be moderately offended if you don’t read it.

I hate the word “drone.”

It’s an ugly word and has poor syntax. Adverbs are weak in writing. Drone is a noun that practically requires another noun in usage; similar to how an adverb can only exist to modify another word.

Drone is Germanic in origin and basically means “to roar.” The English adopted the word and used it zoologically to describe a male bee. I like to think this evolved from referring to a sound “The lion droned.” “The lion’s drone.” In particular it was used to describe the sound of bees “the droning of bees.” That led to its usage as a noun “the drone bee.” Some of this is my own speculation; there are entire scholars whose degrees are based around this sort of thing. Still, the progression here is a logical one following the German origin into the English usage.

The association with bees is where we also start to get another common usage “the factory drone” to describe a poor, industrial worker doing menial labor.

In 1935 that the word gained its military connotation when the British Royal Navy demonstrated its new remote-control aircraft for target practice, the DH 82B Queen Bee. Any guesses why drone became associated with a remote controlled device called the “queen bee?”

The evolution of language is genuinely interesting to me. I love understanding how words change. Figuring out how drone evolved was fun but I still hate it as a word.

Fast-forward to present day. Up until the very recent military usage, it was still rare to use the word “drone” as a stand alone noun. Previous syntax, even within the military would be something like “target drone” or “practice drone.”

It is recent that the word has begun to mean one specific thing. If I say to you now “a drone”, you do not think of a male bee or a noise. Instead you’ll think of a robot aircraft. In this context, drones are largely a negative. If we discuss “drones” blind patriotism and anti-Obama sentiments come to a bizarre crossfire. Lack of meaningful discourse surrounding its current usage further taints the word.

Lastly the word sounds ugly.That has to do with its origin as a Germanic onomatopoeia. When I hear “drone,” it’s like its been amputated from another word. The way droid is short for android and I’m always wondering what the other half must be. “Androne? No… that doesn’t seem right…”

Negative military connotation. A reliance on another word (adjective or noun). And the sound of the word itself. These are all the reasons I hate the word “drone.”

The more you know…

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