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drive home

drive home idiom

Make clearly understood, make a point, as in The network news programs drive home the fact that violence is part of urban life. This expression uses the verb drive in the sense of “force by a blow or thrust” (as in driving a nail). Samuel Hieron used it in Works (1607): “That I may ... drive home the nail of this exhortation even to the head.”

The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.