drift
/dɹɪft/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.82 in modern English
9
Scrabble Score
5
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Some log perhaps upon the waters swam, a useless drift."
- "a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, of plants, etc."
- "Drifts of rising dust involve the sky."
- "We […] got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift [of ice]."
- "Many of these ground-layer plants were placed in naturalistic drifts to make it appear as if they were sowing themselves."
- ""During the winter, we get really bad snow conditions. We can go to eight inches of snow above the railhead, then the trains are stopped. It's usually more like four inches, but you get big drifts up towards Rannoch."
Etymology
From Middle English drift, dryft (“act of driving, drove, shower of rain or snow, impulse”), from Old English *drift (“drift”), from Proto-Germanic *driftiz (“drift”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”). Equivalent to drive + -t; cognate with North Frisian drift (“drift”), Saterland Frisian Drift (“current, flow, stream, drift”), Dutch drift (“drift, passion, urge”), German Drift (“drift”) and Trift (“drove, pasture”), Danish drift (“impulse, instinct”), Swedish drift (“impulse, instinct”), Icelandic drift (“drift, snow-drift”).