drifter
UK/ˈdɹɪftə//ˈdɹɪftɚ/
drifter noun: a person who moves from place to place or job to job.
Noun (1)
drifter (plural drifters)
- A person who moves from place to place or job to job.
- There are drifters painting beside you / They don't see the future that I do2009, Aleisha Eagle, “The Quittin' Kind”, in Neither Here Nor There
- A type of lightweight sail used in light winds like a spinnaker.
- In winds above 10 knots we usually run wing-and-wing with our 100 percent lapper set on a whisker pole opposite the mainsail. As the wind drops, we get out the drifter and set it flying to leeward (Fig. 1).1995, Ken Textor, The New Book of Sail Trim, page 85
- After trying a variety of light-wind sails, we've found the most versatile and simple one to be a nylon drifter.1999, Lin Pardey, Larry Pardey, Cost Conscious Cruiser: Champagne Cruising on a Beer Budget
- A driver who uses driving techniques to modify vehicle traction to cause a vehicle to slide or power slide rather than drive in line with the tires.
- However, sensing the available traction may actually be more important to a drifter.2006, Paul Morton, How to Drift: The Art of Oversteer, page 32
- For professional drifters looking for even more fine-tuning of their suspension setups, some companies offer more advanced two-way adjustable shocks […]2007, Calvin Wan, Calvin Wan's Drifting Performance Handbook, page 132
- A parachutist who jumps before the rest of the group to determine wind direction.
- As we circled the area, the Dakota appeared and dropped a drifter.1948, Aeroplane and Commercial Aviation News, volume 75, page 557
- […] a circling Beverley dropped parachutists in small groups — a few hard words were said about R.A.F. organisation. The time came at last for the first four to get into the balloon car. First out was a drifter — an experienced parachutist who jumps first to assess conditions by allowing himself to...1962, Queen's Medical Magazine, volumes 54-55, page 31
- A person employed in driving in rock other than coal.
Noun (2)
drifter (plural drifters)
drifter meaning in Malayalam
drifter in Malayalam
- wanderer, traveller, transient
- അലഞ്ഞു നടക്കുന്നവൻ, അതകൻ, നാടോടി, ദേശികൻ, യാത്രികൻ, യാത്രക്കാരൻ
Examples of drifter in a sentence
- Some people recommend a medium- to lightweight 140- or 150-percent headsail, and others go for a drifter/reacher.2000, Jim Howard, Charles J. Doane, Handbook of Offshore Cruising, page 178:
- While this method is used by a few drifters in rear-wheel drive cars, this technique is really the only way one can drift in a front-wheel drive car.2009, Michael Bender, The Fast, the Fraudulent and the Fatal, page 50:
- First out was a drifter — an experienced parachutist who jumps first to assess conditions by allowing himself to drift at random.1962, Queen's Medical Magazine, volumes 54-55, page 31:
Forms of drifter
| plural | drifters |
|---|
Origin of drifter
From drift (verb) + -er.
From drift (noun) + -er.
Words that rhyme with drifter
Questions about drifter
- What does drifter mean?
- Drifter means a person who moves from place to place or job to job.
- What is drifter in Malayalam?
- Drifter in Malayalam is അലഞ്ഞു നടക്കുന്നവൻ, അതകൻ, നാടോടി. See Drifter meaning in Malayalam.
- How do you use drifter in a sentence?
- Some people recommend a medium- to lightweight 140- or 150-percent headsail, and others go for a drifter/reacher.
- What part of speech is drifter?
- Drifter is a noun.
- How do you pronounce drifter?
- Drifter is pronounced /ˈdɹɪftə/ (UK).
- What is the plural of drifter?
- The plural of drifter is drifters.
Words near drifter in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: drifter (page history and authors); drifter (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-drifter.wav.
Cite this entry: “drifter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drifter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.