Past tense of drift
regular verb
The past tense of drift is drifted. The past participle is also drifted.
Forms of drift
| Base form (V1) | drift /dɹɪft/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | drifted /ˈdɹɪftɪd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | drifted /ˈdɹɪftɪd/ |
| Present participle | drifting /ˈdɹɪftɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | drifts /dɹɪfts/ |
Drifted in a sentence
- The boat drifted away from the shore.
- One day I was out in the barn and he drifted in.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter XI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
- The hours of his illness were disjointed and confusing as he drifted in and out of consciousness.From the entry disjointed
- We used to be good friends but we drifted apart over the years.From the entry drift apart
- The car in front drifted wide on the bend, so I darted up the inside to take the lead.From the entry inside
Meaning of drift
- noun Anything driven at random.
- noun A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., especially by wind or water.
- noun The distance through which a current flows in a given time.
Questions about the past tense of drift
- What is the past tense of drift?
- The past tense of drift is drifted.
- What is the past participle of drift?
- The past participle of drift is drifted.
- Is drift a regular or irregular verb?
- Drift is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: drift (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of drift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/drift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.