test drive

test drive noun: a sample driving session in a motor vehicle, in order to assess its quality before purchase.

Noun

test drive (plural test drives)

A sample driving session in a motor vehicle, in order to assess its quality before purchase.
- And with an on-the-road price in the region of £15,300, the Primera 1.8S represents solid rather than really tempting value, since £200 more will buy you the more powerful and arguably more stylish Honda Accord 1.8iS. But even so, this new Primera is still well worth a test drive.1999 September 13, Richard Simpson, “Test drive”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
(figuratively) Any preliminary assessment of something through use.

Synonyms:

test-ride

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

(transitive) To take a motor vehicle on the road to assess its quality before purchase.
(figuratively, transitive) To establish a preliminary assessment of something through its use.

Synonyms:

test-ride

Noun
plural	test drives
Verb
third-person singular present	test drives
present participle	test driving
past	test drove
past participle	test driven
alternative form	test-drive

What does test drive mean?: Test drive means a sample driving session in a motor vehicle, in order to assess its quality before purchase.
What part of speech is test drive?: Test drive can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of test drive?: The plural of test drive is test drives.

Adapted from Wiktionary: test drive (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “test drive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/test_drive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.