Dictionary

drive home en · VERB

Pronunciation

• (Australia) audio

Meanings

1. (transitive) To push something into position completely by force.
   • He grunted as he drove each nail home. 1969, James Plunkett, Strumpet City, page 396:
   • Karli shook himself, drove home the last nail with a flat stone, straightened up. 1996, Harry Harrison, One King's Way, page 186:
   • Just as Ione began to slow, she struck Ione's sword aside and drove her own blade home. 2004, Judith Tarr, Queen of the Amazons, page 293:
2. (figuratively, transitive) To emphasize (a point) with tangible or powerful demonstration.
   • The urgent need for vaccines was driven home by the expected postponement on Monday of Britain’s plan to reopen, caused by the spread of a variant known as Delta among the unvaccinated population. 2021 June 14, Mark Landler, “Boris Johnson’s ‘Global Britain’ Makes Shaky Start at G7 Summit”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • She had dropped sideways in Gerty's big arm-chair, her head buried where lately Selden's had leaned, in a beauty of abandonment that drove home to Gerty's aching senses the inevitableness of her own defeat. 1905, Edith Wharton, chapter XIV, in The House of Mirth, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC:
   • Anything, she thought, was better than bickering or the strange silence which drove home to her the distance between them. 1919 October 20, Virginia Woolf, chapter XXII, in Night and Day, London: Duckworth and Company […], →OCLC:
3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see drive, home.
   • He decided not to drive home right away.
   • He was afraid he would doze off on the long drive home.

Forms

Synonyms

hammer home · ram home

Translations (7)

es allegar (2. to emphasise) · es llevar al hogar en carro (3. drive home) · es hacer llegar (2. to emphasise) · es poner de relieve (2. to emphasise) · pdc aabefehle (2. to emphasise) · mi ngahu (1. to force something into position) · he תָּחַב (1. to force something into position)