Word of the Day: In droves
Before the pandemic, immigrants were heading to Europe in droves.
Hundreds of thousands of them were illegally crossing into Turkey from Syria and crossing the Mediterranean in boats from Libya, trying to get into Greece.
That’s our word for today, droves.
It’s not a word you hear very often, is it?
It is a word more commonly used in the UK and eastern Canada than in the US.
You’ll most often see it used as a pair with ‘in’ as in ‘in droves,’ which means in large numbers.
Yes, drove by itself has a meaning, and it means a large herd of animals moving from one place to another.
You’ve probably seen many sheep or cattle being moved along roads in Europe from one pasture to another.
Often they get in the way of traffic and cause it to slow down.
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When people move or go somewhere in large numbers, we also say they are moving in droves.
At the end of every year, before New Year’s Day, Japanese people visit markets in droves to buy food for the New Year’s holidays.
In a non-pandemic year, young Japanese attend concerts such as Summer Sonic or Fuji Rock in droves.
You see, there are large numbers of people all going in the same direction.
The term itself is neither positive nor negative.
It’s used to make a statement – large numbers of people are moving from one place to another simultaneously.
When you think about it, it’s similar to the way animals such as the Gnu migrate across Africa.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least a 7th-grade education (age 12).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 71.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.