Word.ws English Dictionary

driven to distraction

driven to distraction is the past participle of drive to distraction.

Meaning of drive to distraction

Verb

drive to distraction (third-person singular simple present drives to distraction, present participle driving to distraction, simple past drove to distraction, past participle driven to distraction)

  1. (excessive, transitive) To annoy (someone) so much that they cannot concentrate.
    • "[…]pray do this for us—pray do not drive to distraction a man who has loved you so well."1855 January 5, Anthony Trollope, The Warden, London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    drive crazy, drive round the bend, drive up the wall

Questions about driven to distraction

What is driven to distraction the past participle of?
Driven to distraction is the past participle of drive to distraction.

Words near driven to distraction in the dictionary

  1. driven someone up the wall
  2. driven something down
  3. driven something into the ground
  4. driven stick
  5. driven the porcelain bus
  6. driven to distraction
  7. driven to drink
  8. driven truck
  9. driven up
  10. drivenness
  11. driveoff

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: driven to distraction (page history and authors); drive to distraction (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.

Last updated:

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