drove

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /dɹəʊv/
  • Rhymes: -əʊv
• (General American) IPA^(key): /dɹoʊv/

  • Audio (General American):

    (file)

• (Can we verify⁽⁺⁾ this pronunciation?) IPA^(key): /d͡ʒɹoʊv/ (used in some regions of the US, particularly the Midwest)

• Audio (UK):

  (file)

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.

drove (plural droves)

1. A cattle drive or the herd being driven by it; thus, a number of cattle driven to market or new pastures.
2. (figuratively, by extension, usually in the plural) A large number of people on the move.

   in droves

3. (collective) A group of hares.
4. A road or track along which cattle are habitually, used to be or coil be driven; a droveway.
5. A narrow drain or channel used in the irrigation of land.^[1]
6. A broad chisel used to bring stone to a nearly smooth surface.
7. The grooved surface of stone finished by the drove chisel.

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

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
   • 2019 April 17, Ch Insp Lee, quotee, BBC News‎^[1]:

     We are appealing to any individuals who "have" drove that road who may well have [...]

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.

2. (transitive) To finish (stone) with a drove chisel.

• drover

• Devor, Dover, Dovre, Voder, roved, vedro, vored

drove

1. Alternative form of drof