Word.ws English Dictionary

drove to distraction

drove to distraction is the simple past 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 drove to distraction

What is drove to distraction the simple past of?
Drove to distraction is the simple past of drive to distraction.

Words near drove to distraction in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drove 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: “drove to distraction.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drove_to_distraction. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.