drone vs hum

drone

noun
  • A humming or deep murmuring sound. 

  • One of the fixed-pitch pipes on a bagpipe. 

  • One who performs menial or tedious work. 

  • A person without the ability to think critically and independently, especially one who follows a group blindly; a non-player character. 

  • A remotely controlled aircraft, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). 

  • A Toyota HiAce or a similar van, especially one used by Ugandan state agents to kidnap opposition members. 

  • A male ant, bee or wasp, which does not work but can fertilize the queen. 

  • A genre of music that uses repeated lengthy droning sounds. 

  • A low-pitched hum or buzz. 

verb
  • To speak in a monotone way. 

  • To produce a low-pitched hum or buzz. 

  • To kill with a missile fired by unmanned aircraft. 

hum

noun
  • An often indistinct sound resembling human humming. 

  • Unpleasant odour. 

  • A phenomenon, or collection of phenomena, involving widespread reports of a persistent and invasive low-frequency humming, rumbling, or droning noise not audible to all people. 

  • Busy activity, like the buzz of a beehive. 

  • A hummed tune, i.e. created orally with lips closed. 

intj
  • Synonym of um: a noise indicating doubt, uncertainty, &c. 

  • Synonym of hmm: a noise indicating thought, consideration, &c. 

verb
  • To produce low sounds which blend continuously 

  • To express by humming. 

  • To reek, smell bad. 

  • To make a sound from the vocal chords without pronouncing any real words, with one's lips closed. 

  • To drone like certain insects naturally do in motion, or sounding similarly 

  • To buzz, be busily active like a beehive 

How often have the words drone and hum occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )