Other forms: driving, driven, drove, drives
To drive is to sit behind the wheel and make a car go where you want it: hands on the wheel, foot on the pedal, eyes on the road. You drive to work, drive the kids to school, drive four hours north and stop twice for coffee.
Drive reaches far past cars. You drive a nail into wood with a hammer, drive sheep down a lane, drive prices up — the older picture underneath is pushing something along. It works on people too: a dripping tap drives you mad, hunger drives a person to steal. As a noun it is the journey (a two-hour drive), the short road up to a house (the car is on the drive), the part of a computer that holds files (save it to the drive), and the push inside a person (she has real drive). Watch the past forms, drove and driven, and remember that you drive a car but ride a bike or a horse.
1verbdriveTo control a car or other vehicle and make it move.~7%
“He drives a delivery van across the city every morning.”
synonyms: steer
2verbtakeTo take someone somewhere in a vehicle.~2%
“Can you drive me to the airport on Friday?”
3verbpushTo push or force something into a place or in a direction.~2%
“She drives the tent pegs in with the back of an axe.”
4verbfeelTo make someone feel or behave in a particular way.~2%
“The noise from upstairs is driving him mad.”
5verbsupplyTo supply the power that makes a machine or process work.~21%
“A small motor drives the pump.”
6nounjourneyA journey in a car.~2%
“It is a long drive from the coast to the border.”
7nounmotivationEnergy and determination to get things done.~7%
“She has the drive to finish what she starts.”
synonyms: motivation, determination
8noundeviceA device that stores computer data.~55%
“Copy the photos onto the external drive.”
9nounshortA short private road leading up to a house.~2%
“His car was parked on the drive.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 19 sentences found in the wild and placed 13 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Old English had drīfan, to drive, force, move, and behind it stand Proto-Germanic drībaną and a Proto-Indo-European root dʰreybʰ-, to drive or push. The word is far older than the car: for most of its life it meant pushing cattle, nails and enemies along. Steering a vehicle is the newest job an ancient word took on.
Middle English
driven
English, today
drive
From Middle English driven. From Middle English driven, from Old English drīfan (“to drive, force, move”), from Proto-West Germanic drīban, from Proto-Germanic drībaną (“to drive”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”). 2
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA