get the drift
get the drift verb: to understand, at least on some basic or general level.
Verb
get the drift (third-person singular simple present gets the drift, present participle getting the drift, simple past got the drift, past participle (UK) got the drift or (US) gotten the drift)
- To understand, at least on some basic or general level.
- I don't really read French, but I can often guess enough to get the drift.
- By now you're probably starting to get my drift that cutting costs in today's rail industry is not going to be either easy or pain-free.2022 January 12, Sir Michael Holden, “Reform of the workforce or death by a thousand cuts?”, in RAIL, number 948, page 24
Forms of get the drift
| third-person singular present | gets the drift |
|---|---|
| present participle | getting the drift |
| past | got the drift |
| past participle UK | got the drift |
| past participle US | gotten the drift |
Words that rhyme with get the drift
Questions about get the drift
- What does get the drift mean?
- Get the drift means to understand, at least on some basic or general level.
- What part of speech is get the drift?
- Get the drift is a verb.
- What is the past tense of get the drift?
- The past tense of get the drift is got the drift.
Words near get the drift in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: get the drift (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: en-au-get the drift.ogg.
Cite this entry: “get the drift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/get_the_drift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.