Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A flock or herd being driven in a body.
  • noun A large mass of people moving or acting as a body.
  • noun A stonemason's broad-edged chisel used for rough hewing.
  • noun A stone surface dressed with such a chisel.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Preterit and obsolete and dialectal past participle of drive.
  • In masonry, to tool roughly
  • noun A number of oxen, sheep, or swine driven in a body; cattle driven in a herd: by extension, a collection or crowd of other animals, or of human beings, in motion.
  • noun A road or drive for sheep or cattle in droves.
  • noun A narrow channel or drain, used in the irrigation of land.
  • To trouble; afflict; make anxious.
  • noun A chisel, from two to four inches broad, used in making droved work.
  • To follow the occupation of a drover.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • imperative of drive.
  • verb To drive, as cattle or sheep, esp. on long journeys; to follow the occupation of a drover.
  • verb To finish, as stone, with a drove or drove chisel.
  • noun A collection of cattle driven, or cattle collected for driving; a number of animals, as oxen, sheep, or swine, driven in a body.
  • noun Any collection of irrational animals, moving or driving forward.
  • noun A crowd of people in motion.
  • noun engraving A road for driving cattle; a driftway.
  • noun (Agric.) A narrow drain or channel used in the irrigation of land.
  • noun A broad chisel used to bring stone to a nearly smooth surface; -- called also drove chisel.
  • noun The grooved surface of stone finished by the drove chisel; -- called also drove work.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A number of cattle driven to market or new pastures.
  • noun usually plural A large number of people on the move (literally or figuratively).
  • noun A road or track along which cattle are habitually driven
  • verb Simple past of drive.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a group of animals (a herd or flock) moving together
  • noun a stonemason's chisel with a broad edge for dressing stone
  • noun a moving crowd

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old English drāf, from drīfan, to drive; see dhreibh- in Indo-European roots.]

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Examples

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  • The cost was a constant worry and issues related to military pay and the number of legions and where they could settle after their term drove a lot of the internal conflict.

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  • We just drove from the Lake Chapala area and spent three nights in Patzcuaro after stopping in Morelia to have lunch with friends (hey!).

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  • Here we see the same thing over and over again with republicans siding with big corporation, wall street, hedge fund managers, with the status quo that almost drove is to the cliff.

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  • We just drove from the Lake Chapala area and spent three nights in Patzcuaro after stopping in Morelia to have lunch with friends (hey!).

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  • We just drove from the Lake Chapala area and spent three nights in Patzcuaro after stopping in Morelia to have lunch with friends (hey!).

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  • We just drove from the Lake Chapala area and spent three nights in Patzcuaro after stopping in Morelia to have lunch with friends (hey!).

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  • Repairing the damage of the 111th Congress will take years, and perhaps decades, but the first step is ousting the liberals who once again drove their party off a cliff.

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  • And we drove from the Vaucluse all the way to Croatia.

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  • Note: I finally quit using the turn-by-turn voice and drove from the display.

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