Word.ws English Dictionary

dreave

dreave verb: to drive; drive out; drive away; expel.

Verb

dreave (third-person singular simple present dreaves, present participle dreaving, simple past and past participle dreft or dreaved)

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To drive; drive out; drive away; expel.

Noun

dreave (plural dreaves)

  1. (UK, dialectal) A drove.
  2. (UK, dialectal) A crowd or throng of people.
  3. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) The yearly herring fishing.
  4. (Scotland, UK, dialectal) A shoal of fish; a catch.

Forms of dreave

Verb
third-person singular presentdreaves
present participledreaving
past participledreft
pastdreft
past participledreaved
pastdreaved
alternative formdreve
Noun
pluraldreaves
alternative formdrave
alternative formdraif
alternative formdreef

Origin of dreave

From Middle English dreven, from Old English drǣfan (“to drive, drive out, expel”), from Proto-Germanic *draibijaną (“to cause to drive”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”). Cognate with Icelandic dreifa (“to spread out, disperse”). More at drive.

From Middle English draf, from Old English drāf (“a drove, herd”). More at drove.

Questions about dreave

What does dreave mean?
Dreave means to drive; drive out; drive away; expel.
What part of speech is dreave?
Dreave can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of dreave?
The past tense of dreave is dreft.

Words near dreave in the dictionary

  1. drearisome
  2. drearness
  3. drears
  4. drearsome
  5. dreary
  6. dreave
  7. dreaved
  8. dreaves
  9. dreaving
  10. Drebin
  11. drebrin

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: dreave (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: “dreave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/dreave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.