Word.ws English Dictionary

bedrive

bedrive verb: to drive or toss about; drive out, off, back, or away; defeat.

Verb

bedrive (third-person singular simple present bedrives, present participle bedriving, simple past bedrove, past participle bedriven)

  1. (archaic, transitive) To drive or toss about; drive out, off, back, or away; defeat.
    • But when every human help ceased, that they might trust more to divine help, they then first began to fight against their foes, who for many years before harried and plundered on them, and they then made a great slaughter among them, and bedrove them home, and had a victory.1852, Alfred (King of England), The whole works of King Alfred the Great
  2. (archaic, transitive) To effect; do; commit; perpetrate; experience.
    • And every man that standeth here would well bethink him what he hath done and bedriven in his days, he should the better have patience and pity on Reynart.1889, Henry Morley, Early prose romances

Forms of bedrive

third-person singular presentbedrives
present participlebedriving
pastbedrove
past participlebedriven

Origin of bedrive

From Middle English bidriven, from Old English bedrīfan (“to drive; beat; strike; assail; follow up; pursue; surround; cover”), from Proto-West Germanic *bidrīban, equivalent to be- + drive. Cognate with Dutch bedrijven (“to commit, perpetrate”), German betreiben (“to operate, conduct, pursue”), Swedish bedriva (“to manage, carry on, prosecute”).

Questions about bedrive

What does bedrive mean?
Bedrive means to drive or toss about; drive out, off, back, or away; defeat.
What part of speech is bedrive?
Bedrive is a verb.
What is the past tense of bedrive?
The past tense of bedrive is bedrove.

Words near bedrive in the dictionary

  1. bedripped
  2. bedripping
  3. bedrips
  4. bedrite
  5. bedrites
  6. bedrive
  7. bedrivel
  8. bedriveled
  9. bedriveling
  10. bedrivelled
  11. bedrivelling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bedrive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “bedrive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bedrive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.