Definition of "drove"

drove¹

/dɹəʊv/

noun
plural droves
1. A cattle drive or the herd being driven by it; thus, a number of cattle driven to market or new pastures.
2. (figuratively, by extension, usually in the plural) A large number of people on the move.
3. (collective) A group of hares.
4. A road or track along which cattle are habitually, used to be or coil be driven; a droveway.
5. A narrow drain or channel used in the irrigation of land.
6. A broad chisel used to bring stone to a nearly smooth surface.
7. The grooved surface of stone finished by the drove chisel.

drove²

/dɹəʊv/

verb
1. simple past of drive
  Quotations
  I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town.
  1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter II, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
  Iron and coal were the magnets that drew railways to this land of lovely valleys and silent mountains—for such it was a century-and-a-half ago, before man blackened the valleys with the smoke of his forges, scarred the green hills with his shafts and waste-heaps, and drove the salmon from the quiet Rhondda and the murmuring Taff.
  1939 September, D. S. Barrie, “The Railways of South Wales”, in Railway Magazine, page 157
verb
third-person singular simple present droves, present participle droving, simple past and past participle droved
1. To herd cattle; particularly over a long distance.
  Quotations
  He's droving now with Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.
  1890, Banjo Paterson, The Man from Snowy River
2. (transitive) To finish (stone) with a drove chisel.