Drill

How to spell drill

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce drill

What does drill mean?

1. nounA powered or hand tool used to bore holes in wood, metal, or masonry.
2. verbTo bore a hole into a surface using a rotating tool.
3. nounA repetitive exercise used to train people through practice, as in the military, sport, or a classroom.

Drill in a sentence

• noun

  He charged the cordless drill before starting the shelves.

• verb

  You need to drill a pilot hole before fixing the screw.

• noun

  The school runs a fire drill every term so everyone knows the exits.

• noun

  The drill slipped and left a scratch across the cabinet door.

• verb

  Workers had to drill through solid rock to lay the pipe.

• noun

  The sergeant put the recruits through a punishing morning drill.

Where does drill come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Drill came into English in the early 1600s from the Dutch verb drillen, which meant 'to bore a hole', 'to turn around', and also 'to train soldiers'. That spread of meanings in the original Dutch explains why English drill still covers boring through wood or stone, the rotating tool that does the boring, and the repetitive military or classroom practice that 'turns' people into trained performers. The shared idea running through all of these is rotation and repetition: a drill bit spins round and round, and a drill exercise repeats the same motions until they stick. The fabric called drill (a tough twilled cotton) is a separate borrowing, a shortened form of German Drillich, ultimately from a Latin word meaning 'threefold', referring to the three threads of its weave. Because the word is short and phonetically regular, its spelling has stayed stable since it entered the language.

How the word is built

• drill (single root, from Dutch drillen: to bore, turn, or train)