march to the beat of a different drum

English

Alternative forms

• march to a different drum / march to a different drummer
• march to one's own drum / march to one's own drummer
• march to the beat of a different drummer
• march to the beat of one's own drum / march to the beat of one's own drummer
• march to a different beat
• march to a different tune (UK) / march to the beat of a different tune

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Verb

march to the beat of a different drum (third-person singular simple present marches to the beat of a different drum, present participle marching to the beat of a different drum, simple past and past participle marched to the beat of a different drum)

1. (idiomatic) To do things in one's own way regardless of societal norms and conventional expectations.
   • 1994 January 10, Penn Jillette, “Las Vegas: Tonight! Miracles, Live!”, in Time:

     Siegfried and Roy, two nuts from Germany, are out of their wealthy little minds. They live in a mansion whose ceiling is painted like the Sistine Chapel, with either Siegfried or Roy (who can remember?) in place of Adam. Roy has a "meditation chamber" (the rest of us have dressing rooms) furnished with a mystic rug and cages for his tigers. They wow the crowd with heavy machinery and endangered-species eugenics. I love S&R. They march to the beat of a different drum machine.

   • 2004, Danny Hakim, “E.P.A. Energy-Saving Spots Give Cars Short Shrift”, in New York Times, retrieved 21 July 2011:

     The ad ends with a shot of Mark pushing the car down a hill and Suzanne saying, "He still marches to the beat of a different drum."

   • 2004, Larry Portis, French Frenzies: A Social History of Pop Music in France, →ISBN, page 114:

     A defense of non-conformism, deceptively simple in tone and construction, and only slightly political, it is the story of a loner . . . who stays in bed on Bastille Day and ignores the military parade . . . "the good people don't like it when you take a path different from theirs," when you march to the beat of a different drum.

Translations

to do things unconventionally

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 獨樹一幟 / 独树一帜 (zh) (dúshùyīzhì), 標新立異 / 标新立异 (zh) (biāoxīnlìyì), 特立獨行 / 特立独行 (zh) (tèlìdúxíng), 不走尋常路 / 不走寻常路 (bù zǒu xúncháng lù)

• Finnish: kulkea omia polkujaan
• French: please add this translation if you can
• German: aus der Reihe tanzen (de), aus der Art schlagen (de)
• Japanese: please add this translation if you can
• Portuguese: fazer as coisas do seu jeito
• Romanian: please add this translation if you can
• Russian: идти́ свои́м путём (idtí svoím putjóm), идти́ не в но́гу с други́ми (idtí ne v nógu s drugími)
• Spanish: marchar al ritmo de un diferente tambor