Word.ws English Dictionary

driving a stake through its heart

driving a stake through its heart is the present participle and gerund of drive a stake through its heart.

Meaning of drive a stake through its heart

Verb

drive a stake through its heart (third-person singular simple present drives a stake through its heart, present participle driving a stake through its heart, simple past drove a stake through its heart, past participle driven a stake through its heart)

  1. (idiomatic) get rid of, destroy permanently or stop talking about
    • The Chandlers also were interested in retaining the family fortune, not squandering it, and the Mirror-News was losing $2 million a year. If, the Chandlers thought, they could kill the Mirror-News and drive a stake through its heart, they would be much better off.1984, Peter Benjaminson, Death in the Afternoon: America's Newspaper Giants Struggle for Survival, Andrews, McMeel & Parker, →ISBN

Questions about driving a stake through its heart

What is driving a stake through its heart the present participle and gerund of?
Driving a stake through its heart is the present participle and gerund of drive a stake through its heart.

Words near driving a stake through its heart in the dictionary

  1. driving
  2. driving a coach and horses through
  3. driving a coach and six through
  4. driving a nail in someone's coffin
  5. driving a nail where it will go
  6. driving a stake through its heart
  7. driving a wedge
  8. driving a wedge between
  9. driving at
  10. driving away
  11. driving axle

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: driving a stake through its heart (page history and authors); drive a stake through its heart (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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