to drive home
27
4.0
- phrasal verb
- /draɪv hoʊm/
:
hacer hincapié en
- The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 drove home the value of a safer, more equitable world.
- drive home this point
- drive home a message
- drive home the lesson
It's so, it's so, it's so it's, they drove home the point that America is prepared.
- It's so, it's so, it's so it's, they drove home the point that America is prepared.
- And I think my mother's the one that really drove that message home always until now.
- So this whole session sort of drives that fact home.
- But there's one story that really drives home this, this issue about kids influencing kids.
- Then Vice President Pence showed up and drove home his core message that he is extremely boring.
- I didn't have to always play really fast because the purpose for me is to drive home a story or drive home a feeling.
- And this was a point that, that, that they made and, and, and really was driven home to me in West Africa after the outbreak.
- And she solid joke, family joke and she drove her point home.
Examples
-
And I want to try to drive home that point in this talk.
-
Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina drove home the point in his celebrated "King Cotton" speech of March 1858.
Academic text (2013) -
I do want to drive home the rest.
-
I think this should really drive it home for people.
-
It's just like, it just, it drives home how hard it is to make this stuff work.
-
In repeating this point here, however, we mean to drive it home more specifically.
Academic text (2016) -
So through this entire series, what we're going to be driving home is the importance of saving seeds.
-
Several times a year, we team up to drive educational points home in an unforgettable fashion.
Academic text (2007) -
In order to drive home the point that these are nevertheless dairy cattle.
Academic text (1995) -
In her speech, she aimed to drive home the critical need for climate action.
Synonyms
14
3.7
To make someone understand something clearly
6
4.4
To make an idea very clear by repeating it
To say something clearly and strongly so people understand it
Make a point strongly so other people understand or accept it
Antonyms
How Emphatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
Knowing 'drive' (to push/urge) and 'home' (to bring a point fully) gives a strong clue that the phrase means to push a point into someone's understanding, so a learner can infer the general idea. However, the specific pragmatic sense of 'emphasize or make something very clear/forceful' is a metaphorical extension of the literal parts and relies on particle semantics that are not fully predictable without exposure, so it is only partially transparent.
Etymology
The phrasal verb drive home comes from the image of hammering a nail until it is driven home: you drive the nail in with a hammer so it stays fixed. So the phrase means 'to make something very clear or strong'.