drilling

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
drill1

▶noun

• 1 a tool or machine with a rotating or reciprocating cutting tip, used for boring holes.

• 2 training in military exercises.

  ■ instruction by means of repeated exercises.

  ■ (the drill) informal the correct or recognized procedure.

• 3 a predatory mollusc that bores into the shells of other molluscs. [Urosalpinx cinerea (oyster drill, America) and other species.]

▶verb

• 1 bore (a hole) in something with a drill.

  ■ sink a borehole.

• 2 subject to military training or other intensive instruction.

• 3 informal (in sport) hit (a shot) hard and in a straight line.

• 4 (drill down) Computing access data in a lower level of a hierarchically structured database.

– derivatives
driller noun.

– origin C17: from MDu. drillen ‘bore, turn in a circle’.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
drill2

▶noun a machine which makes small furrows, sows seed in them, and then covers the sown seed.

■ a small furrow made by a drill.

▶verb sow with a drill.

– origin C18: perh. from drill1.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
drill3

▶noun a West African baboon with a naked blue or purple rump. [Mandrillus leucophaeus.]

– origin C17: prob. a local word; cf. mandrill.

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
drill4

▶noun a coarse twilled cotton or linen fabric.

– origin C18: abbrev. of earlier drilling, from Ger. Drillich, from L. trilix ‘triple-twilled’, from tri- ‘three’ + licium ‘thread’.