Word.ws English Dictionary

fordrive

fordrive verb: to drive away; expel.

Verb

fordrive (third-person singular simple present fordrives, present participle fordriving, simple past fordrove, past participle fordriven)

  1. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To drive away; expel.
  2. (UK, dialectal, transitive) To drive about; drive here and there; drive astray.

Forms of fordrive

third-person singular presentfordrives
present participlefordriving
pastfordrove
past participlefordriven

Origin of fordrive

From Middle English fordriven, from Old English fordrīfan (“to drive, sweep away, drive on, impel, compel, drive away, expel, overtax”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradrīban, from Proto-Germanic *fradrībaną (“to drive away, drive out, expel”), equivalent to for- + drive. Cognate with West Frisian fordriuwe, ferdriuwe (“to expel”), Dutch verdrijven (“to expel”), German Low German verdrieven (“to drive away”), German vertreiben (“to expel, drive out, banish”), Danish fordrive (“to oust, expel”), Swedish fördriva (“to drive away, drive out, banish”).

Questions about fordrive

What does fordrive mean?
Fordrive means to drive away; expel.
What part of speech is fordrive?
Fordrive is a verb.
What is the past tense of fordrive?
The past tense of fordrive is fordrove.

Words near fordrive in the dictionary

  1. fordrenched
  2. fordrenches
  3. fordrenching
  4. fordried
  5. fordries
  6. fordrive
  7. fordriven
  8. fordriving
  9. fordrove
  10. fordry
  11. fordrying

Source and license

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