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DRIFTING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Aimless wandering from place to place
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("drifting" is a kind of...):
roving; vagabondage; wandering (travelling about without any clear destination)
Derivation:
drift (move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment)
drift (wander from a direct course or at random)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another
Example:
vagrant hippies of the sixties
Synonyms:
aimless; drifting; floating; vagabond; vagrant
Classified under:
Similar:
unsettled (not settled or established)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb drift
Context examples:
On the cooler, dark side of the planet, the atoms can recombine into molecules and condense into clouds, all before drifting back into the dayside to be splintered again.
(Water Is Destroyed, Then Reborn in Ultrahot Jupiters, NASA/JPL)
That was the meaning of it all; he had been drifting that way all the time, and now Swinburne showed him that it was the happy way out.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
The faster spin rate loosened chunks of material, which are drifting off into space.
(Hubble Takes Close-up Look at Disintegrating Comet, NASA)
Because they can be prevented from drifting further away by high places in the ocean floor, they can in turn prevent land-associated ice masses from becoming detached.
(Scientists describe how 'upside-down rivers' of warm water break Antarctica's ice shelf, Wikinews)
The rover used its black-and-white Navigation Cameras (Navcams) to snap images of drifting clouds on May 7 and May 12, 2019, sols 2400 and 2405.
(Curiosity Mars Rover Finds a Clay Cache, NASA)
A dull wrack was drifting slowly across the sky, and a star or two twinkled dimly here and there through the rifts of the clouds.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The work was soon finished; in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me and my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice that was continually lessening and thus preparing for me a hideous death.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
She had not time to know how Mr. Elton took the reproof, so rapidly did another subject succeed; for Mr. John Knightley now came into the room from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr. Woodhouse: This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements, sir.
(Emma, by Jane Austen)
I still saw the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Being unafraid, he was drifting deeper into the shadow.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
