driven, ppl. a.
(ˈdrɪv(ə)n)
[pa. pple. of drive v.]
1. Urged onward, impelled, etc.: see the verb.
| 1641 Best Farm. Bks. (Surtees) 99 If it bee not infected with a wheate called driven-wheate; which wheate hath no awnes like unto long-read. 1801 Southey Thalaba ix. xli, The driven air before her fann'd the face Of Thalaba. 1887 Pall Mall G. 3 Aug. 2/1 An amount of work such as mates of less driven steamers have no idea of. |
2. Of snow: Carried along and gathered into heaps by the wind; drifted. Of feathers or down: Separated from the heavier by a current of air (see drive v. 8 d).
| 1579 Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 89 As white as the driven snow. 1604 Shakes. Oth. i. iii. 232 My thrice-driuen bed of Downe. 1668 H. More Div. Dial. iii. xxviii. (1713) 251 Thin Paper..but as strong as any Vellum, and as white as driven Snow. 1817 Scott Harold i. xix, More than to rest on driven down. 1823 Byron Juan vi. xxv, Sheets white as what bards call ‘driven Snow’. |
3. driven well (U.S.), a tube-well.
| a 1877 in Knight Dict. Mech. 1923 M. Watts L. Nichols 5 A driven well..went dry in periods of prolonged drought. |
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▸ Of a person: relentlessly compelled by the need to accomplish a goal; (excessively) hard-working; motivated, ambitious.
| 1797R. Toup Let. 28 Jan. in R. King Life & Corr. (1895) II. 136 Not a man amongst us that is in business but what is extremely driven for money. 1893 A. W. Besant Autobiogr. v. 105 At night the unhappy, driven man, the fever-stricken wife, the fever-stricken child, the dead child, all lay in the one bed. 1913 C. Weygandt Irish Plays & Playwrights ix. 256 He was a driven man earning his living by his pen. 1963 B. Friedan Feminine Mystique x. 233 One, after five years of therapy, was no longer a driven woman, but neither was she a full-time housewife; she had become a computer programmer. 1999 Campaign 2 July 40/1 (advt.) This pivotal role would suit..a highly driven clientside marketer. |