drum up

To gather, to summon. Alluding to summoning recruits by beating a drum, this term has been used figuratively since the 1600s. It is often used in a business sense, as it was by Thomas Gray in a letter of 1849: “I will then drum up subscribers for Fendler.” An antonym is to drum out, meaning to dis- miss or oust. In the military this, too, was signaled by beating a drum. This came to mean being fired from a job but is not heard as often today.