Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use drift in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Drift means anything driven at random. Example: “The boat drifted away from the shore.”

Examples of drift by meaning

nounA mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc....

  • a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, of plants, etc.
  • Many of these ground-layer plants were placed in naturalistic drifts to make it appear as if they were sowing themselves.2012, David L. Culp, The Layered Garden: Design Lessons for Year-Round Beauty from Brandywine Cottage, Timber Press, page 168
  • It's usually more like four inches, but you get big drifts up towards Rannoch.2023 November 29, Paul Clifton, “West is best in the Highlands”, in RAIL, number 997, page 39

nounThe animals being moved in a drive, as of cattle, goats, horses, pigs or sheep.

  • Mind yourselves below; there's a drift of sheep coming down the road1912, John M Synge, The Works of John M Synge, At a Wicklow Fair, page 38

nounA group of birds moving together.

  • A drift of geese rose over the bank.2023, Sue Hubbard, Flatlands, Steerforth Press, page 213
  • a drift of ducks waddled in panic from her bare feet2014, George Mackay Brown, Hawkfall, John Murray Press
  • a drift of birds, wheeling flashing their white underwings1983, Graham Greene, The Man Within, Penguin Books

nounMinor deviation of audio or video playback from its correct speed.

  • Reference sync servo system — permits minimal time-base error, assuring minimum jitter and drift.1975, Broadcast Management/engineering, volume 11

nounThe situation where a performer gradually and unintentionally moves from their proper location within the scene.

  • There is another form of drift when playing in a scene with other actors.1970, Michael Pate, The Film Actor: Acting for Motion Pictures and Television, page 64

verbTo move slowly, especially pushed by currents of water, air, etc.

  • The boat drifted away from the shore.
  • The balloon was drifting in the breeze.
  • 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

verbTo move haphazardly without any destination.

  • He drifted from town to town, never settling down.

verbTo deviate gently from the intended direction of travel.

  • This car tends to drift left at high speeds.
  • Midway through the half, Argentine Tevez did begin to drift inside in order to exert his influence but by this stage Mick McCarthy's side had gone 1-0 up and looked comfortable.2011 January 15, Saj Chowdhury, “Man City 4-3 Wolves”, in BBC

More sentences with drift

  • He used technical jargon but I managed to catch the drift of his argument.From the entry jargon
  • You need to increase your sens if you want to stop mouse drift.From the entry sens
  • The hours of his illness were disjointed and confusing as he drifted in and out of consciousness.From the entry disjointed
  • I don't really read French, but I can often guess enough to get the drift.From the entry get the drift
  • We used to be good friends but we drifted apart over the years.From the entry drift apart
  • Yesterday saw a downward drift in share prices and an upward surge in commodities.From the entry downward drift
  • A word and its false friend may well be etymologically related: in such cases semantic shifts have made them drift apart.From the entry false friend
  • The raw signal data was subjected to a baseline correction process to subtract the sensor's offset and drift variations.From the entry offset
  • The car in front drifted wide on the bend, so I darted up the inside to take the lead.From the entry inside
  • Prices have drifted downward in recent weeks.From the entry downward
  • The balloon drifted upwards into the sky.From the entry upwards
  • The vapour drifted nebulously into the hall.From the entry nebulously
  • Left unmoored, the boat gradually drifted out to sea.From the entry unmoored
  • I caught her drift when she looked at me from across the noisy lunchroom and went over to her table.From the entry catch someone's drift
  • The snow fence is a guard against drifts.From the entry snow fence
  • We drifted with the wind abaft.From the entry abaft
  • I see you catch my drift.From the entry catch someone's drift
  • Most drift seeds are produced by tropical trees, and they can be found on distant beaches after drifting thousands of miles through ocean currents.From the entry drift seed
  • AI hallucination and AI drift are two key challenges of large language models (LLMs).2025 May, Hamidreza Namazi, Mohammad Mahdi Radfar, “Philosophy of medicine meets AI hallucination and AI drift: moving toward a more…. From the entry AI drift
  • Rain clouds smirred the horizon, but for now the grey mists above were content to drift on.2022, John MacKay, The Road Dance. From the entry smirr
  • Not everyone wants to 'WFH', and there's a clear drift back to the office.2022 November 30, Paul Bigland, “Destination Oban: a Sunday in Scotland”, in RAIL, number 971, page 79. From the entry WFH
  • Concept drift is an important issue to be considered in data stream mining.2020, Zhiwen Yu et al., editors, Green, Pervasive, and Cloud Computing […] , Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 115. From the entry concept drift
  • And letting ice-cold "bought" air drift outside was a pet peeve of hers.2020, Sasha Summers, Jace. From the entry bought air
  • I watched as lightning bugs drifted in, glowing yellow against the shadows.2019, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer, Penguin Books (2020), page 18. From the entry lightning bug
  • As I drift off to sleep there's a gentle tapping at my door.2019, Michael Mitchell, Final Fire: A Memoir. From the entry gotchies

Meaning of drift

  1. noun Anything driven at random.
  2. 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.
  3. noun The distance through which a current flows in a given time.

Full definition of drift

Questions about drift in a sentence

How do you use drift in a sentence?
Drift is used as a noun and verb. For example: “The boat drifted away from the shore.”
What is a short sentence with drift?
“I see you catch my drift.”
What does drift mean?
Drift means anything driven at random.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: drift (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use drift in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/drift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.