drives

1. 1
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present of drive.

   He drives a delivery truck across three states each week.

   Falling demand drives prices down across the whole market.

   Note

   The present-tense form can take its subject from either side of the wheel. A person drives a truck, or simply drives to work with no object at all. Because the vehicle sense also runs the other way, the car itself can be the subject: this car drives beautifully. Underneath sits the sense of pushing onward by force, which is why demand drives prices down and a herder drives cattle.

   This old sedan still drives smoothly on the highway.

   She drives to work every morning before dawn.

2. 2
   noun

   Plural of drive.

   The new laptops shipped with solid-state drives instead of spinning disks.

   Her competing drives for security and adventure kept her restless.

   Note

   A plural that changes what the word counts. Drive as ambition is usually a mass quality (she has drive), so in that sense drives names separate urges pulling against each other. The countable uses pluralize without fuss: cattle drives, game drives, military drives toward an objective, and the mechanisms that power a machine. The same spelling is also the present-tense verb, so the sentence decides which you are reading.

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