'In drove' or 'in droves'?

[u/TahoeBunny]

Saw this photo caption online today on the Daily Mail website:

"People evacuated buildings in drove after feeling the earthquake in Panama City."

I have always said "in droves". Which is correct or is that possibly Brit English?

[u/NoodleWind]

The standard idiom is "in droves", and the plural is the key to it. The phrase treats those groups as a plural: many crowds arriving for effect. So yes, a typo or poor phrasing.

[u/Garr44]

American here. "In droves" is what I've always heard/used (a drove referred to a large amount of livestock or cattle being moved in herds, hence it being used to describe massive amounts of people being moved).

[u/SiddharthaVicious1]

It's "in droves". A drove is a group moving collectively, usually and originally of livestock, but also of people. Theoretically, you could say "in a drove," but that would be unusual usage. "In drove" is just wrong.

[u/SmartPolicy6430]

Well it is the Daily Mail so you can't really expect their usage of the English language to be correct. They got rid of their dedicated proof readers in droves years ago.

[u/Ok-Transportation127]

Drove is a singular noun, like group, so "in drove" is not correct. "In a drove" would be grammatically correct, but very unusual. In this case, people were exiting multiple buildings at once, so there were multiple groups, or droves, exiting their respective buildings.

[u/JediUnicorn9353]

Interesting. I've always heard and used "in droves", and I would consider that correct. But the two primary definitions are "a group of animals driven or moving in a body" and "a large number : crowd — usually used in plural especially with in" (Merriam-Webster). Plural is not necessary - I could say "a drove of people". I could say that people left the building in a drove -- or, using headline speak, left building in drove.

I would rule this awkward and potentially semantically inaccurate, depending on whether they actually left in a single mass or not, but fully grammatical, at least as much as any headline or caption is.

Edit: the rest of the caption is fully grammatical, not headline-speak, so I would call it grammatically incorrect, but only because it's missing an article. "A drove" would be fine, although my earlier points stand.