fife

The two presidents celebrated the “ironclad alliance” amid fife and drums on the White House lawn ahead of their high-level meetings and a state dinner.

From Washington Times ● Apr. 26, 2023

A fife and drum corps perform at King and Market streets before the parade passes through.

From Washington Post ● Jun. 30, 2021

There was a “Spirit of ’76”—three men with fife and drum.

From Slate ● Jun. 20, 2020

Here camp and its covert campaign of subversion feel wonderfully urgent and necessary: the gap-toothed fife player in the march toward “nonbinary.”

From Los Angeles Times ● May 15, 2019

A repeating pattern showing the famous trio of drummer boy, fife player, and lame old man.

From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides

Then the “sounds of Nazi marches with fifes and drums came through the radio.”

From Slate ● Jan. 26, 2025

His supporters, some dressed as American Revolution-era patriots and playing fifes, were thrilled by Ramaswamy’s turn in the spotlight Wednesday night.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 24, 2023

You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly.

From The New Yorker ● Jun. 6, 2017

Although it is not staffed by guides, if you press a button on the porch, a comprehensive account of the building’s history plays to the tune of fifes and drums.

From Washington Post ● Jul. 21, 2016

The drums marched ahead, and there was music on the fifes, and behind the men who carried the coffin walked the wife and two children....

From "The Sun Also Rises" by Ernest Hemingway

He let himself be drummed and fifed home by the town militia towards evening.

From Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces; or, the Wedded Life, Death, and Marriage of Firmian Stanislaus Siebenkaes, Parish Advocate in the Burgh of Kuhschnappel. by Jean Paul

So I was, and I voted for him, drummed for him, fifed and blowed; that was no reason for my thinking him the best man we had for the office.

From The Humors of Falconbridge A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes by Falconbridge

Unlike the buccaneers, who had fired high to cripple their enemies above decks, the French fifed low to smash the hull of their assailant.

From Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

A drum corps was organized, if that could be said to be organized in which every member drummed or fifed independently of all others.

From The Story of the Raising and Organization of a Regiment of Volunteers in 1862 Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States, Commandery of the District of Columbia, War Papers 46 by Ellis Spear

The city fathers have decked out some of Boston's sons in Revolutionary costumes and sent them roaming through the streets fifing and drumming.

From Time Magazine Archive

In the foreground is the “Portsmouth Fly,” with officers inside, taking their ease, and a number of soldiers occupying a precarious perch on the roof, fifing and drumming, regardless of jolts and lurches.

From The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries To-Day and in Days of Old by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper

Now they had prepared a little fleet to pass over to the Fourth of July celebration, which some queer drumming and fifing, from the opposite bank, had announced to be "on hand."

From Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 by Margaret Fuller

In these drumming and fifing times the babies suck in quarrel with their mother’s milk.

From Southern Literature From 1579-1895 A comprehensive review, with copious extracts and criticisms for the use of schools and the general reader by Louise Manly

Really, the fifing and drumming must have effected a profound alteration in your convictions.

From The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce — Volume 2: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians by Ambrose Bierce