Word.ws English Dictionary

driftwood

/ˈdɹɪftwʊd/

driftwood noun: floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.

driftwood: floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water
Image: Christian Ferrer, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

driftwood (usually uncountable, plural driftwoods)

  1. (usually) Floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.
    • Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon.1967, Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America
    • A person walks near driftwood and storm debris that washed up in front of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park.2023 January 16, “California’s flooding, in pictures”, in CNN, archived from the original on 17 Mar 2023
  2. (usually) Such a piece of wood that has been cast ashore.
    • Commonly the bear makes a stand in driftwood on a bank, or on a log that has fallen into or across a stream.1915 April, Enos A. Mills, The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 198–199
    • We lit a driftwood fire to help keep the mosquitoes away. It was partially successful.1941 March 12, Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1970, page 461

driftwood meaning in Tamil

driftwood in Tamil

அலங்கார மரத்துண்டு

Examples of driftwood in a sentence

  • I carved the piece of driftwood into a sculpture of a whale.
  • A lot of driftwood was brought in on the tide.
  • The tide washes up a lot of driftwood.

All 25 example sentences with driftwood

Forms of driftwood

pluraldriftwoods
alternative formdrift wood
alternative formdrift-wood

Origin of driftwood

From drift + wood.

Words formed from driftwood

Phrases with driftwood

Questions about driftwood

What does driftwood mean?
Driftwood means floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.
What is driftwood in Tamil?
Driftwood in Tamil is அலங்கார மரத்துண்டு. See Driftwood meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is driftwood?
Driftwood is a noun.
How do you pronounce driftwood?
Driftwood is pronounced /ˈdɹɪftwʊd/.
What is the plural of driftwood?
The plural of driftwood is driftwoods.

Words near driftwood in the dictionary

  1. driftways
  2. driftweed
  3. driftweeds
  4. driftwind
  5. driftwinds
  6. driftwood
  7. driftwood catfish
  8. driftwood catfishes
  9. driftwoods
  10. drifty
  11. Drigg

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: driftwood (page history and authors); driftwood (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

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

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