name, noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun

1. 1
   The act or process of drilling.
2. 2
   A long firearm with three barrels (typically a mix of shotgun and rifle barrels).
3. 3
   A heavy, twilled fabric of linen or cotton; drill.
4. 4
   the act of drilling a hole in the earth in the hope of producing petroleum wordnet
5. 5
   the act of drilling wordnet

Verb

1. 1
   present participle and gerund of drill form-of, gerund, participle, present

Proper Noun

1. 1
   A surname from German.

Synonyms

All synonyms

apprenticeshipbasic trainingboringboringbreedingconditioning

Example

More examples

"Tom's company is drilling for oil."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From drill + -ing.

Etymology 2

From German Drilling (“gun with three barrels; triplet”).

Etymology 3

Borrowed from German Drilling.

Related phrases

drilling fluiddrilling rigrope drillingwell drillingdrill bit

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.