Some day huge mother ships may guide fleets of long-distance, cargo-carrying airplanes across continents and oceans. Meaning 'pilotless aircraft directed by remote control' is from 1946.ĭrones, as the radio-controlled craft are called, have many potentialities, civilian and military.
Given a figurative sense of 'idler, lazy worker' (male bees make no honey) 1520s. Middle English drane, drone, 'male honeybee,' from Old English dran, dræn, from Proto-Germanic *dran- (source also of Middle Dutch drane Old High German treno German Drohne, which is from Middle Low German drone), probably imitative (compare Lithuanian tranni, Greek thronax 'a drone').
