pret. Drove,

To impel or urge forward by force; to force; to move by physical force. We drive a nail into wood with a hammer; the wind or a current drive a ship on the ocean.

To compel or urge forward by other means than absolute physical force, or by means that compel the will; as, to drive cattle to market. A smoke drives company from the room. A man may be drive by the necessities of the times, to abandon his country. Drive thy business; let not thy business drive thee.

To chase; to hunt. To drive the deer with hound and horn.

To impel a team of horses or oxen to move forward, and to direct their course; hence, to guide or regulate the course of the carriage drawn by them. We say, to drive a team, or to drive a carriage drawn by a team.

To impel to greater speed.

To clear any place by forcing away what is in it. To drive the country, force the swains away.

To force; to compel; in a general sense.

To hurry on inconsiderately; often with on. In this sense it is more generally intransitive.

To distress; to straighten; as desperate men far driven.

To impel by influence of passion. Anger and lust often drive men into gross crimes.

To urge; to press; as, to drive an argument.

To impel by moral influence; to compel; as, the reasoning of his opponent drove him to acknowledge his error.

To carry on; to prosecute; to keep in motion; as, to drive a trade; to drive business.

To make light by motion or agitation; as, to drive feathers. His thrice driven bed of down. The sense is probably to beat; but I do not recollect this application of the word in America. To drive away, to force to remove to a distance; to expel; to dispel; to scatter. To drive off, to compel to remove from a place; to expel; to drive to a distance. To drive out, to expel.

To be forced along; to be impelled; to be moved by any physical force or agent; as, a ship drives before the wind.

To rush and press with violence; as, a storm drives against the house. Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails.

To pass in a carriage; as, he drove to London. This phrase is elliptical. He drove his horses or carriage to London.

To aim at or tend to; to urge towards a point; to make an effort to reach or obtain; as, we know the end the author is driving at.

To aim a blow; to strike at with force. Four rogues in buckram let drive at me. Drive, in all its senses, implies forcible or violent action. It is opposed to lead. To drive a body is to move it by applying a force behind; to lead is to cause to move by applying the force before, or forward of the body.