Dictionary Definition
drift
Noun
2 the gradual departure from an intended course
due to external influences (as a ship or plane)
3 a process of linguistic change over a period of
time
4 something that is heaped up by the wind or by
water currents
5 a general tendency to change (as of opinion);
"not openly liberal but that is the trend of the book"; "a broad
movement of the electorate to the right" [syn: trend, movement]
6 general meaning or tenor; "caught the drift of
the conversation" [syn: purport]
7 a horizontal (or nearly horizontal) passageway
in a mine; "they dug a drift parallel with the vein" [syn: heading, gallery]
Verb
1 be in motion due to some air or water current;
"The leaves were blowing in the wind"; "the boat drifted on the
lake"; "The sailboat was adrift on the open sea"; "the shipwrecked
boat drifted away from the shore" [syn: float, be adrift,
blow]
2 wander from a direct course or at random; "The
child strayed from the path and her parents lost sight of her";
"don't drift from the set course" [syn: stray, err]
3 move about aimlessly or without any
destination, often in search of food or employment; "The gypsies
roamed the woods"; "roving vagabonds"; "the wandering Jew"; "The
cattle roam across the prairie"; "the laborers drift from one town
to the next"; "They rolled from town to town" [syn: roll, wander, swan, stray, tramp, roam, cast, ramble, rove, range, vagabond]
4 vary or move from a fixed point or course;
"stock prices are drifting higher"
5 live unhurriedly, irresponsibly, or freely; "My
son drifted around for years in California before going to law
school" [syn: freewheel]
6 move in an unhurried fashion; "The unknown
young man drifted among the invited guests"
7 cause to be carried by a current; "drift the
boats downstream"
8 drive slowly and far afield for grazing; "drift
the cattle herds westwards"
9 be subject to fluctuation; "The stock market
drifted upward"
10 be piled up in banks or heaps by the force of
wind or a current; "snow drifting several feet high"; "sand
drifting like snow"
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Pronunciation
- drĭft, /drɪft/, /drIft/
Noun
- The act or motion of drifting; the force which impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse.
- A place, also known as a ford, along a river where the water is shallow enough to permit oxen or sheep to be driven to the opposite side.
- Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting.
- The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim.
- That which is driven, forced, or urged along
- Anything driven at random.
- A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like.
- A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds.
- The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments.
- A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.
- In South Africa, a ford in a river.
- A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging or shaping a hole in metal, by being forced or driven into or through it; a broach.
- A tool used in driving down compactly the composition contained in a rocket, or like firework.
- A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to oblong projectiles.
- A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft; a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel.
- The distance through which a current flows in a given time.
- The angle which the line of a ship's motion makes with the meridian, in drifting.
- The distance to which a vessel is carried off from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other causes.
- The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the sheer is raised and the rail is cut off, and usually terminated with a scroll, or driftpiece.
- The distance between the two blocks of a tackle.
- The difference between the size of a bolt and the hole into which it is driven, or between the circumference of a hoop and that of the mast on which it is to be driven.
- A sideways movement of the ball through the air, when bowled by a spin bowler.
- driftwood included in flotsam washed up onto the beach.
- Drift (see Wikipedia). The material left behind by the retreat of continenal glaciers. It buries former river valleys and creates young river valleys. The Diftless Area, a geographical area of North America, was unglaciated for the past 510 million years. Mass noun.
Translations
The act or motion of drifting; the force which
impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse
A place, also known as a ford, along a river
where the water is shallow enough to permit oxen or sheep to be
driven to the opposite side
- Finnish: kahluupaikka
- French: gué (passer à gué)
- Swedish: drift
Course or direction along which anything is
driven; setting
- Swedish: drift
The tendency of an act, argument, course of
conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention
That which is driven, forced, or urged along
Anything driven at random
- Swedish: driva
A mass of matter which has been driven or forced
onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc.
- Finnish: kasa, kasaantuma, kasautuma
A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds
- Finnish: lauma
The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or
vault upon the abutments
A collection of loose earth and rocks, or
boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the
earth's surface
In South Africa, a ford in a river
A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging
or shaping a hole in metal
A tool used in driving down compactly the
composition contained in a rocket, or like firework
- Swedish: drift
A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to
oblong projectiles
A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft;
a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel
- Swedish: drift
The distance through which a current flows in a
given time
The angle which the line of a ship's motion
makes with the meridian, in drifting
- Swedish: drift
The distance to which a vessel is carried off
from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other
causes
The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the
sheer is raised and the rail is cut off
The distance between the two blocks of a
tackle
The difference between the size of a bolt and
the hole into which it is driven
A sideways movement of the ball through the air,
when bowled by a spin bowler
Driftwood included in flotsam washed up onto the
beach
- Finnish: ajopuu
Verb
- To move slowly, pushed by currents of water, air, etc
- To move haphazardly without any
destination.
- He drifted from town to town, never settling down.
- To deviate gently from the intended direction of travel.
- This car tends to drift left at high speeds
Translations
To move haphazardly without any destination
- Finnish: harhailla, hortoilla, kuljeskella
To deviate gently from the intended direction of
travel
- Finnish: ajautua
Dutch
Noun
drift cRelated terms
Swedish
Noun
drift- urge, instinct
- operation, management (singular only)
Extensive Definition
Drift is a slow change and may refer specifically
to:
In the literal sense of a change in position of a
body:
- Drifting (motorsport), which is a sport where drivers intentionally induce oversteer, to be judged on their technique.
- Drift (railroad), which in railroading is the cutting off of power and using inertia alone to maintain forward movement.
- The condition where a motor vehicle's rear wheels slip at a greater angle than the front wheels; see oversteer.
- Intentional use of oversteer for faster cornering in low road surface traction conditions; see Opposite lock
- Ice drift: drift of sea ice
- Snow drift: a deposit of snow created by the wind
In science and technology:
- Drift (linguistics): the variation of speech.
- Drift (telecommunication): the slow long-term variation of an attribute or value of a system or device.
- In plasma physics, drift is the motion of the guiding center of a particle.
- Drift mining: a nearly horizontal underground tunnel.
- Drift (geology): Organic or inorganic debris transported and deposited by or from ice, especially by or from a glacier.
- Genetic drift: mechanism of evolution that change the characteristics of species over time.
- Clock drift: a phenomenon where a clock does not run in the exact right speed compared to another clock.
- Drift (fluid mechanics): the permanent displacement of fluid particles in an inviscid fluid owing to their kinematic motion when a body passes through it.
- Continental drift
- A Punch (engineering) used to align parts
In geography (In South
Africa, drift is a synonym for ford):
- Pont Drift on the Limpopo River on the road between South Africa and Botswana.
- Rorke's Drift, which is the site of 1879 battle between British and Zulu forces.
- Mostert's Drift, near Jonkershoek, on the Eerste River at Stellenbosch.
- Muldersdrift, near Johannesburg on the road between Krugersdorp and Pretoria.
- Velddrif, which is a town on the west coast Bergrivier Local Municipality.
- Xuka Drift on the upper reaches of the Mbashe River near Ngcobo in the Eastern Cape.
- Drift, Cornwall: a village – Drift Reservoir is nearby
In culture:
- Drift (album) is the fifth album by Flotsam and Jetsam.
- Drift (Doctor Who), a Doctor Who novel.
- Drift (2000 film), a Canadian film written and directed by Quentin Lee.
- Drift series, an ongoing series of Japanese film written and directed by Futoshi Jinno, debuting in 2006
- Drifting (film), a 1923 film directed by Tod Browning
drift in Czech: Drift
drift in German: Drift
drift in Spanish: Deriva
drift in Korean: 드리프트
drift in Dutch: Drift
drift in Japanese: ドリフト
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
Brownian movement, Zeitgeist, aberrancy, aberration, accumulation, advance, aeroplane, affective meaning,
affluence, afflux, affluxion, aim, airlift, airplane, alluvion, alluvium, amble, angular motion, anthill, army, array, ascending, ascent, atmospherics, axial motion,
azimuth, backflowing, backing, backward motion,
balloon, bank, bank up, bat, bat around, batch, be a sideliner, be
airborne, be still, bear off, bearing, bend, bent, bias, blaring, blasting, blind spot, branching
off, bum, bunch, bundle, career, circuitousness, climbing, clump, cluster, clutch, coast, cock, colony, color, coloring, concourse, confluence, conflux, connotation, consequence, corner, count ties, course, crawling, creeping, crook, crosscurrent, cruise, current, curve, dance, dart, debris, declination, defluxion, delay, denotation, departure, deposit, descending, descent, detour, detritus, deviance, deviancy, deviation, deviousness, digression, diluvium, direction, direction line,
discursion, disposition, divagate, divagation, divarication, divergence, diversion, do nothing,
dogleg, double, downflow, downpour, downward motion,
drift off course, driftage, drifting, drive, drove, dune, ebbing, effect, embankment, err, errantry, essence, excurse, excursion, excursus, exorbitation, extension, fade-out, fading, fall down, ferry, fetch away, flicker, flight, flit, flitter, float, flock, flood, flow, flowing, fluency, flutter, flux, fly, foot, force, forward motion, gad, gad about, gallivant, gam, gang, ghost, gist, glacial movement, glide, go about, go astray, go the
rounds, grammatical meaning, group, gush, hairpin, hang fire, haycock, haymow, hayrick, haystack, heading, heap, heap up, helmsmanship, herd, hibernate, hill, hit the road, hit the trail,
hobo, hop, host, hover, hydroplane, idea, idle, impact, implication, import, inclination, inclining, indirection, inflow, intension, intent, intention, interference, jaunt, jet, kennel, knock about, knock
around, lay, leeway, lexical meaning, lie, lie dormant, line, line of direction, line of
march, linger, literal
meaning, litter, loess, lot, main current, mainstream, make leeway,
mass, maunder, meander, meaning, mill run, millrace, molehill, mooch, mope, moraine, mosey, motion, mound, mountain, mounting, movement, mow, muck, navigate, navigation, noise, nomadize, not budge, not stir,
object, oblique motion,
obliquity, ongoing, onrush, onward course, orientation, outflow, overtone, pack, parcel, partiality, passage, pay off, penchant, peregrinate, pererrate, pererration, pertinence, pile, pile up, piloting, pith, plow the deep, plunging, pod, point, practical consequence,
predilection,
pride, progress, progression, propensity, prowl, purport, purpose, pyramid, quarter, race, radial motion, ramble, rambling, random motion,
range, range of meaning,
real meaning, reception, reference, referent, reflowing, refluence, reflux, regression, relation, relevance, rest, retrogression, rick, ride, ride the sea, rising, roam, rove, run, run about, rush, sag, sail, sailplane, saunter, school, scope, scree, scud, seaplane, sediment, semantic cluster,
semantic field, sense,
set, sheer, shift, shifting, shifting course,
shifting path, shoal,
shock, shoot, sideward motion, significance, signification, significatum, signifie, silt, sinking, sinter, sit back, sit it out,
skew, skim, skulk, slant, slip, sloth, snake, snowdrift, soar, soaring, span of meaning,
spate, spirit, stack, stack up, stagnate, static, steerage, steering, sternway, straggle, stray, straying, stream, stroll, structural meaning,
subsiding, substance, sum, sum and substance, surge, sweep, swerve, swerving, swing, swinging, symbolic meaning,
tack, take it easy, take
the air, take wing, tendency, tenor, the general tendency, the
main course, tide, time
spirit, tone, totality of
associations, track,
traipse, traject, trajet, tramp, transferred meaning,
trend, trip, troop, turn, turning, twist, twist and turn, unadorned
meaning, undercurrent, undertone, undertow, upward motion,
vagabond, vagabondize, value, variation, veer, vegetate, volplane, waft, wait and see, walk the
tracks, walk the waters, wander, wandering, warp, wash, watch and wait, water flow,
way, wayfare, wind, wing, yaw, yaw off, zigzag