Word.ws English Dictionary

drifting

/ˈdɹɪftɪŋ/

drifting adjective: moving aimlessly or at the mercy of external forces. Also the present participle and gerund of drift.

Adjective

drifting (not comparable)

  1. Moving aimlessly or at the mercy of external forces.
    • The drifting seaweed went wherever the currents carried it.
  2. Without direction, focus, or goal.
    • [Lionel] Johnson was stern by nature, strong by intellect, and always, I think, deliberately picked his company, but [Ernest] Dowson seemed gentle, affectionate, drifting.1922, W[illiam] B[utler] Yeats, chapter VIII, in The Trembling of the Veil, London: Privately printed for subscribers only by T[homas] Werner Laurie, Ltd., →OCLC, book IV (The Tragic Generation)...
    • There is nothing more expressive of a barbarous and stupid lack of culture than the half-unconscious attitude so many of us slip into, of taking for granted, when we see weak, neurotic, helpless, drifting, unhappy people, that it is by reason of some special merit in us or by reason of some...1930, John Cowper Powys, chapter X, in The Meaning of Culture

Noun

drifting (countable and uncountable, plural driftings)

  1. The act by which something drifts.
    • True, there had been some heavy falls of snow and some of the roads had become blocked, while north of Inverness there was drifting that held up traffic here and there, but things were no worse than are expected in January.1960 March, “The January blizzard in the North-East of Scotland”, in Trains Illustrated, page 137
    • Still, she did not regret him, for nothing Ernest could have given her would have equalled the delight of those romantic driftings on the lake with Eden.2009, Mazo de la Roche, Whiteoak Heritage, page 204
  2. That which drifts.
    • [W]ith hollow eyes / Many all day in dazzling river stood, / To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.1820, John Keats, “Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio.”, in Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, London: […] [Thomas Davison] for Taylor and Hessey, […], →OCLC...
  3. A driving technique where the driver intentionally oversteers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels, while maintaining control from entry to exit of a corner.

Also used as

drifting is also the present participle and gerund of drift.

Examples of drifting in a sentence

  • Amid the flutters of sunshine drifting through the dense canopy, I spotted my target.
  • We were drifting on a dead calm sea for a third week in a row.
  • Whales feed on tiny plankton drifting in the ocean.

All 40 example sentences with drifting

Forms of drifting

pluraldriftings

Words formed from drifting

Phrases with drifting

Words that rhyme with drifting

Questions about drifting

What does drifting mean?
Drifting means moving aimlessly or at the mercy of external forces.
What part of speech is drifting?
Drifting can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce drifting?
Drifting is pronounced /ˈdɹɪftɪŋ/.

Words near drifting in the dictionary

  1. driftier
  2. driftiest
  3. driftily
  4. driftin'
  5. driftiness
  6. drifting
  7. drifting along
  8. drifting apart
  9. drifting off
  10. driftingly
  11. driftingness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drifting (page history and authors). 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-drifting.wav.

Cite this entry: “drifting.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/drifting. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.