drover

plural drovers · alternative drovier

1. A person who drives animals (which are on foot or on the hoof, walking to some destination), especially cattle or sheep, and especially over long distances.

   In the present day, we take it for granted that livestock are transported by truck or rail, but in past centuries, they were driven by drovers, and a herd might be met on any street, road, or highway.

   3 more examples

   Why, that's spoken like an honest drovier: so they sell bullocks.

   1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]

   Daily driven / (Wife as drover) / Ill you've thriven-- / Ne'er in clover.

   1893, W. S. Gilbert, Utopia, Limited, Act I

   Little is the modern-day Buchanon. In 2013 he oversaw the Brinkworth drive, taking 20,000 cattle owned by South Australian pastoralist Tom Brinkworth from western Queensland to southern NSW, separating them into smaller mobs and employing contract drovers to assist.

   2024 October 5, Carly Earl, “‘I lost my phone in the first week’: a new generation of drovers in outback Queensland”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Synonyms: driver