Drove Meaning
/dɹəʊv/Definition, CEFR level A2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA cattle drive or the herd being driven by it; thus, a number of cattle driven to market or new pastures.
nounA large number of people on the move.
Sentence Examples
Hunger drove him to steal.
We turned left at the corner and drove north.
Paula got into the car and drove off.
CEFR Practice Quiz
A large ____ of cattle moved slowly across the open field.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Hunger ____ him to steal.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English drove, drof, draf, from Old English drāf (“action of driving; a driving out, expulsion; drove, herd, band; company, band; road along which cattle are driven”), from Proto-Germanic *draibō (“a drive, push, movement, drove”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”). Cognate with Scots drave, dreef (“drove, crowd”), Dutch dreef (“a walkway, wide road with trees, drove”), Middle High German treip (“a drove”), Swedish drev (“a drive, drove”), Icelandic dreif (“a scattering, distribution”). More at drive.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"Iron and coal were the magnets that drew railways to this land of lovely valleys and silent mountains—for such it was a century-and-a-half ago, before man blackened the valleys with the smoke of his forges, scarred the green hills with his shafts and waste-heaps, and drove the salmon from the quiet Rhondda and the murmuring Taff."
— 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 157:
"Not the Horn-Plague, but something worse, Had drove the frighted Cucks from thence."
— 1706, Edward Ward, Hudibras redivivus, I.10:
"Then, being on his knees between my thighs, he drew up his ſhirt, and bared all his hairy thighs, and ſtiff ſtaring truncheon, red-topt, and rooted into a thicket of curls, which cover’d his belly to his navel, and gave it the air of a fleſh-bruſh: and ſoon I felt it joining cloſe to mine, when he had drove the nail up to the head, and left no partition but the intermediate hair on both ſides."
— 1749, [John Cleland], “[Letter the First]”, in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure [Fanny Hill], volume I, London: […] [Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [i.e., Fenton and Ralph Griffiths] […], →OCLC, pages 165–166:
"We are appealing to any individuals who "have" drove that road who may well have [...]"
— 2019 April 17, Ch Insp Lee, quotee, BBC News:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
A large ____ of cattle moved slowly across the open field.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
Hunger ____ him to steal.