thrum

1. A word that actually means to drum one's fingers, or to strum a stringed instrument in an unskilled manner.

2. A word that is frequently misused to the point of cliché by amateur writers who think it's a hybrid of "throb" and "hum."

It isn't.

"The magic thrummed through his hands," the novice wrote, halfway though a uninspired first draft of a book that was driven by neither plot nor character development and yet would still be put in the hands of a jaded copy editor and published.