Driver

How to spell driver

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce driver

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does driver mean?

1. nounA person who operates and controls a motor vehicle.
2. nounA golf club with a large head, used to hit the ball long distances from the tee.
3. nounA small program that controls how a computer communicates with a piece of hardware.

Driver in a sentence

• The delivery driver left the parcel by the front door.

• He pulled out his driver for the long opening hole.

• The printer would not work until she installed the correct driver.

• Every driver must hold a valid licence before taking the wheel.

• A new driver can add several yards to a tee shot.

• An outdated graphics driver caused the screen to flicker.

Where does driver come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word is built from the verb 'drive', which comes from the Old English drifan, meaning to push, urge, or force something forward, especially to make cattle or other animals move ahead of you. That sense of urging onward is very old and shared with related Germanic languages such as Dutch and German, where similar verbs carried the same idea of propelling something. The agent suffix '-er', also native to English and used to mean 'one who does the action', was added to give 'driver', literally 'one who drives'. For centuries a driver was the person who urged on animals or steered a cart or coach, and only with the arrival of the motor car did the modern sense of a vehicle operator become the dominant meaning. The same root later branched into specialised uses, such as the golf club designed to send the ball the greatest distance and the small program that 'drives' a piece of computer hardware, each keeping the core idea of forcing something forward.

How the word is built

• drive (from Old English drifan: to push or urge forward)
• -er (agent suffix: one who does)