Emily Dickinson Lexicon

DRIVE, v.t. [pret. drove, formerly drave; pp. driven; Sax. drifan; Goth. dreiban; D. dryven; G. treiben; Sw. drifva; Dan. driver; also Sax. dryfan, to vex; adrifan, to drive. From the German we have thrive. See Ar. طَرَفَ tarafa, to drive. Class Rb, No. 29, and Heb. Syr. Ar. רוב, id. No. 4.]

1. 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 drives a ship on the ocean.
2. 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 driven by the necessities of the times, to abandon his country. Drive thy business; let not thy business drive thee. – Franklin.
3. To chase; to hunt. To drive the deer with hound and horn. – Chevy Chase.
4. 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.
5. To impel to greater speed.
6. To clear any place by forcing away what is in it. To drive the country, force the swains away. – Dryden.
7. To force; to compel; in a general sense.
8. To hurry on inconsiderately; often with on. In this sense it is more generally intransitive.
9. To distress; to straighten; as, desperate men far driven. – Spenser.
10. To impel by the influence of passion. Anger and lust often drive men into gross crimes.
11. To urge; to press; as, to drive an argument.
12. To impel by moral influence; to compel; as, the reasoning of his opponent drove him to acknowledge his error.
13. To carry on; to prosecute; to keep in motion; as, to drive a trade; to drive business.
14. To make light by motion or agitation; as, to drive feathers. His thrice driven bed of down. – Shak. 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.