Drift

How to spell drift

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce drift

What does drift mean?

1. verbTo be carried along slowly by a current of water or air, or to move aimlessly.
2. nounA bank of snow, sand, or leaves piled up by the wind.
3. nounThe general meaning or underlying intention of what someone says.

Drift in a sentence

• verb

  The empty boat began to drift away from the dock.

• noun

  The car was buried under a deep drift of snow overnight.

• noun

  I missed a few words, but i caught the general drift of her argument.

• verb

  Smoke from the fire started to drift across the valley.

• noun

  A drift of fallen leaves had gathered against the fence.

• noun

  His report rambled, yet the drift was that costs needed cutting.

Where does drift come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

Drift traces back to the Old Norse word 'drift', meaning a snowdrift or something driven along, and it is closely tied to the Old Germanic verb 'driban', the ancestor of the modern English 'drive'. The basic idea was always of being driven or carried forward, whether by wind, water, or force, so the noun originally captured the heap of snow or sand that the wind had driven into a pile. English took the word up in the medieval period, and over time it stretched from physical movement to abstract drifting, such as the gradual wandering of thought or conversation. From this came the familiar phrase about catching someone's 'drift', meaning the general direction or point of what they are saying. The spelling is reassuringly phonetic, since it has stayed close to its short, blunt Norse and Germanic origins rather than being reshaped by Latin or French.

How the word is built

• drift (from the same Germanic root as 'drive', meaning to be driven along)