Other forms: striving, strives, strove, strived, striven
To strive is to push hard towards something over a long stretch, against resistance. A company strives to cut waste; a man strives all his life to clear his father's name.
It takes FOR before a thing — strive for accuracy, strive for peace — or TO before a verb: strive to improve, strive to be better. Strive against means fight something that is pushing back at you. The word is formal and a little lofty, so in ordinary talk people say try hard or work at it; strive lives in mission statements, speeches and serious writing. Its past forms trip people up: strive, strove, striven, though strived now passes without comment. One neighbour to keep separate is strife, meaning bitter conflict — and remember that striving promises effort, never success.
Strive came in from Old French estriver, to compete or quarrel, which French had taken from Frankish strīban, to exert yourself, from Proto-Germanic strībaną. Then something odd happened: English conjugated the borrowed verb like an old native one — strive, strove, striven, on the pattern of drive, drove, driven. That has led some to think an unrecorded Old English verb was already there, waiting for it.
Proto-Germanic
*strībaną
Frankish
*strīban — to exert, make an effort
Old French
estriver — to compete, quarrel
Middle English
striven — to strive
English, today
strive
From Middle English striven (“to strive”), from Old French estriver (“to compete, quarrel”), from Frankish strīban (“to exert, make an effort”) from Proto-Germanic strībaną, or from Frankish stribēn (“to strive”) from Proto-Germanic stribāną. As this verb is conjugated as if it were a strong verb (like drive, ride, and write), it is possible this word may instead be inherited from an unattested Old English strīfan or strifian, which would itself also be inherited from Proto-Germanic strībaną.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Verbs, A Man Called Ove
First appears in chapter 25 of A Man Called Ove.
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