Strive

How to spell strive

6 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce strive

What does strive mean?

1. verbTo make great and determined efforts to achieve or obtain something.

Strive in a sentence

• Good managers strive to give honest feedback to their teams.

• The company will strive to cut its delivery times this year.

Where does strive come from?

Language of origin: French

Strive came into English around the year 1200 from the Old French verb estriver, which meant to quarrel, to contend, or to compete vigorously. That French word is thought to trace back to a Germanic root meaning to struggle or to strain against something, a relative of words found in the older Frankish and Dutch families, though the exact path is not fully certain. The earliest English uses carried the sense of fighting or quarrelling, but over the centuries the meaning softened into the modern idea of making a great and determined effort toward a goal. The strong, irregular forms strove and striven grew up by analogy with native verbs like drive and thrive, even though strive itself was borrowed, which is part of why its past tense can trip writers up. The spelling keeps the single i with the silent final e that signals the long vowel, the same pattern seen in drive and thrive.

How the word is built

• strive (single root verb from Old French estriver: to contend, struggle)