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drove

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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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.

Noun

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drove (plural droves)

  1. A cattle drive, or a drive of another livestock animal (e.g. sheep).
    1. (collective) The herd being driven in a cattle (or other animal) drive; thus, a number of animals driven to market or new pastures; a group of livestock animals more generally.
      Synonym: drift
    2. (figuratively, by extension, usually in the plural) A large number of people on the move.
      in droves
    3. (collective) A group of other animals, especially hares when seen in coursing or hunting.
      • 2026, T.D. Motley, Planting and Painting the Landscape: A Sequel to The Art of Farming‎[1], Stoney Creek Publishing Group:
        The boy hunters had arrived at the wood grove, far off from the wary drove of hares, who resumed foraging cautiously, as before.
      • 1894, Dromas, “Review of Coursing Season, 1893-94”, in The Greyhound Stud Book‎[2], volume Volume 13, National Coursing Club, page 120:
        she and her companion got among a regular drove of hares
      • 1892, Robert Abram Welsh, Thomas Thacker, “The Coursing Catalogue”, in The [afterw.] Thacker's Courser's annual remembrancer and stud book, by T. Thacker (R.A. Welsh)‎[3], page 260:
        The winner got amongst a drove of hares, and was run to a stand still.
  2. A road or track along which cattle are habitually, used to be or could be driven; a droveway.
  3. A narrow drain or channel used in the irrigation of land.[1]
  4. A broad chisel used to bring stone to a nearly smooth surface.
  5. The grooved surface of stone finished by the drove chisel.
Derived terms
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Translations
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Etymology 2

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From earlier drave, from Middle English drave, draf, from Old English drāf, first and third person singular indicative preterite of drīfan (“to drive”).

Verb

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drove

  1. simple past of drive
    • 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:
      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.
    • 1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 157:
      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.
  2. (dialectal) past participle of drive
    • 1706, Edward Ward, Hudibras redivivus, I.10:
      Not the Horn-Plague, but something worse, Had drove the frighted Cucks from thence.
    • 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:
      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.
    • 2019 April 17, Ch Insp Lee, quotee, BBC News‎[4], archived from the original on 14 August 2025:
      We are appealing to any individuals who "have" drove that road who may well have [...]

Verb

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drove (third-person singular simple present droves, present participle droving, simple past and past participle droved)

  1. To herd cattle; particularly over a long distance.
    Synonym: drive
    • 1890, Banjo Paterson, The Man from Snowy River:
      He's droving now with Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.
    • 1937, Ion L. Idriess, Over the Range, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, published 1947, page 11:
      He was droving his mob of fats to Derby, to ship by the southern boat for Fremantle.
  2. (transitive) To finish (stone) with a drove chisel.
Derived terms
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Translations
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References

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  1. ^ 1858, Peter Lund Simmonds, The Dictionary of Trade Products

Anagrams

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Middle English

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Adjective

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drove

  1. alternative form of drof
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