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Drift   /drɪft/   Listen
Drift

verb
(past & past part. drifted; pres. part. drifting)
1.
Be in motion due to some air or water current.  Synonyms: be adrift, blow, float.  "The boat drifted on the lake" , "The sailboat was adrift on the open sea" , "The shipwrecked boat drifted away from the shore"
2.
Wander from a direct course or at random.  Synonyms: err, stray.  "Don't drift from the set course"
3.
Move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment.  Synonyms: cast, ramble, range, roam, roll, rove, stray, swan, tramp, vagabond, wander.  "Roving vagabonds" , "The wandering Jew" , "The cattle roam across the prairie" , "The laborers drift from one town to the next" , "They rolled from town to town"
4.
Vary or move from a fixed point or course.
5.
Live unhurriedly, irresponsibly, or freely.  Synonym: freewheel.
6.
Move in an unhurried fashion.
7.
Cause to be carried by a current.
8.
Drive slowly and far afield for grazing.
9.
Be subject to fluctuation.
10.
Be piled up in banks or heaps by the force of wind or a current.  "Sand drifting like snow"



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"Drift" Quotes from Famous Books



... serious, womanly, sincere. He knew that he had awakened in her her first decent affection, and he knew that she was awakening in him his first desire to accomplish things and be big and worth while. So, together, these two began to drift toward a path of decent dealing, decent ambition, decent thought and decent love, until at last they had both found themselves, acknowledged all the badness of what had been, and planned for all the goodness of what ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow

... not finished the story. We are creatures of OUTSIDE INFLUENCES—we originate NOTHING within. Whenever we take a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is ALWAYS suggested from the OUTSIDE. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of anything that might be painful to you," said Schrotter, with kindly forethought. "I can guess the drift of it, and now understand your last letter. I thought you would probably be in a frame of mind to need a friend near you, and so I ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... you doddering old pirate?" cried Cappy Ricks affectionately. "Come in and rest your hands and feet. I'm tremendously glad to see you. When did you drift into down?" ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... a fool not to have understood the drift of your conversation before it reached this point," Walter said, hotly. "I had rather never own a mill than get it as you propose; and as for evil companions,' I am proud to have been ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis

... bridges, And crushing among the piles, In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes, Like seaward-floating isles;— So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn In trappings of gold and blue, The world shall pass like a shattered glass, And the Heaven of Love ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... flitting swift, The squirrel poising on the drift, Erect, alert, his broad gray tail Set to the north wind like a sail. It came to pass, our little lass, With flattened face against the glass, And eyes in which the tender dew Of pity shone, stood gazing through The narrow space her rosy lips Had melted from the frost's eclipse: ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... necklace may drift to the surface in the eruption which is sure to take place in the near future," smiled Ned. "Now about Gaga," he continued. "Suppose you look around and see if you can't find a room in the old house which would not be used to-night, even if the ...
— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... reporting it quite right and don't know how to report it, but the drift of the babble was something of that sort. And after all, how disgraceful this passion of our great intellects for jesting in a superior way really is! The great European philosopher, the great man of science, the inventor, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... similar to that of the sheriff of a county) is the best off. He has a good salary with little to do, and in some places enjoys in addition the "strand-right," which is at times no inconsiderable privilege, from the quantity of drift timber washed ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... built to intercept the fish that drift along, irrespective of any private traps that may be found on the place. Fish caught in the latter belong to those who put up the traps. While constructing these corrals, the men catch a few fish with their hands, between the rocks, open them in the back and give them to the women, to broil. ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... either the winds or the waves, these combined forces had driven her off her course at an oblique angle, thus converting the nor'-easterly, or easterly drift proper, of the Gulf Stream into a true sou'-westerly one, taking us from latitude 41 deg. 30 minutes north and longitude 51 deg. 40 minutes west, where we were on the previous Friday night, when we were forced to lie-to, to our present position on ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson

... to me: to let her drift, consuming my oil, in the hope that it would blow over; to run into a Spanish port; or to run for France, my destination, and, if I fell short of it, to yell for help by radio, and trust to luck that they could send out and pick me up. The first course was too ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... to row this monstrosity," he said to Beatrice, stopping a moment to dash the sweat off his forehead with a shaking hand. "We either rig the skin sack in some way as a sail, or we drift up with the tide, tie at the ebb, and so on—and if we make the bungalow in ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England

... the drilling that had taken place before the trial, neither the counsel nor witnesses had thought of what questions might come up in the cross-examination, and now, not seeing the drift of the question, the witness seemed a little bewildered, and the counsel ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... reaching the landing steps. But as he rounded the vessel's stern he saw that her starboard side was lighted up, and he ceased rowing, sitting motionless and silently holding water, till the boat began to drift back into the obscurity down-stream. The wharf was above the level of his head, and he could only see, appearing over its edge, the tops of the piles of pit-props. These, as well as the end of ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... running before the wind Jack had never seen before. The sea stood up round about them like a deep snow-drift, although it was almost calm. But they hadn't gone very far before a nasty piping began in the air. The birds shrieked and made for land, and the sea rose like ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie

... you're going along. And don't let your coat get unbuttoned, or your ears froze. I heated some big rocks for the bottom of the sleigh and some little ones for your pockets. You'll both weigh so much that Shadrach can't run away if he wants to, and you can't fall out into a drift." ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... cannot be proved to avail anything. He is incapable of understanding the deeper and truer kind of prayer, but he convinces many that all communion with God is fruitless, or perhaps that there is no God with whom to hold it. This may not be the drift of the article, for, as I said, I have not read it, but it is the drift of much that is talked and written nowadays by men and women of the author's school. I wish there were no schools in that sense. They always have done and always will do harm, and prevent the independence of thought which ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... unless a man brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity, however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the passage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This Persius refuses us. The difficulties which ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... Uncle John. Think, Hugh, she had two hundred and seven buds and blossoms when we sent her. She looked like a snow-drift at sunrise; ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards

... great numbers and swept away the cattle of the colonists, driving them through the Fish River. In carrying away this booty they passed, with great hardihood, close to the fortified post called "Trompetter's Drift." The guns of the position opened with grape and canister, at point-blank range, and accomplished a dreadful slaughter, but none of the booty was recaptured; the enemy even earned away all his ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... the ship's bow lifted to a great sea, there was a dull sound that was scarcely heard, and she began to drift, slowly, at first, until she was broadside to the wind. The anchor chain had broken; but the great ropes that were fastened to the wharf still held her by the stern. Then she drifted faster, in toward the wharves. There was a sound like the ...
— The Sandman: His Sea Stories • William J. Hopkins

... the prince's drift. The big fish was, of course, De Retz, who so skilfully avoided capture; Peleton only ranked as ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens

... Constitution? Is that according to the forms of the Constitution? No, sir. Every argument he has brought against the report of the majority, applies with equal force to his own. His views will answer for those who are willing to stand by and see this Government drift toward destruction—to see this country involved in civil war. It will answer for those who will oppose all action, and who wish to do nothing at all. His report is a new excuse for inaction. It ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... which was part of their pride? How did they point at us, and boldly call, As if we had been vassals to them all, Their poor men-mules, sent thither by hard fate To yoke ourselves for their sedans, and state? Of all ambitions, this was not the least, Whose drift translated man into a beast. What blind discourse the heroes did afford! This lady was their friend, and such a lord. How much of blood was in it! one could tell He came from Bevis and his Arundel; Morglay was yet ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... conclusion of hostilities, peace was declared, the crew of a privateer found it exceedingly irksome to give up the roving life, and were liable to drift into piracy. Often it happened that, after a long naval war, crews were disbanded, ships laid up, and navies reduced, thus flooding the countryside with idle mariners, and filling the roads with begging and starving seamen. These were driven to go to sea if they ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse

... Against the highest stage hereof the steel about we bear, Just where the joints do somewhat give: this from its roots we tear, And heave it up and over wall, whose toppling at the last Bears crash and ruin, and wide away the Danaans are down cast Beneath its fall: but more come on: nor drift of stones doth lack, Nor doth all kind of weapon-shot at any while grow slack. Lo, Pyrrhus in the very porch forth to the door doth pass Exulting; bright with glittering points and flashing of the brass; 470 —E'en as a snake to daylight come, on evil herbage fed, Who, swollen, 'neath the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... the fall of man there was at least some sort of explanation of such phrases; but when it became certain that man had never fallen—when with ever fuller knowledge we could trace our ancestral course down through the cave-man and the drift-man, back to that shadowy and far-off time when the man-like ape slowly evolved into the apelike man—looking back on all this vast succession of life, we knew that it had always been rising from step to step. ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and the drifted clouds in it are washed clean of their London grime. If it is in the afternoon, these beautiful women begin to appear about the time when you may have bidden yourself abandon the hope of them for that day. Some drift from the carriages that draw up on the drive beside the sacred close where they are to sit on penny chairs, spreading far over the green; others glide on foot from elect neighborhoods, or from vehicles left afar, perhaps that ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... hindmost as we went. All at once I heard the hands begin to run over the top of the boat in great confusion, and pull with all their might. And the first thing I know'd after this we went broadside full tilt against the head of an island, where a large raft of drift timber had lodged. The nature of such a place would be, as everybody knows, to suck the boats down and turn them right under this raft; and the uppermost boat would, of course, be suck'd down and go under first. As soon ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... "in chapter thirty-one you make the lovers resolve upon suicide, and you put them in a boat and drift them over Niagara Falls. Twelve chapters farther on you suddenly introduce them walking in the twilight in a leafy lane, and although afterward she goes into a nunnery and takes the black veil because he has been killed by pirates in the Spanish West Indies, in the next chapter to the last ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... together in the middle, and kept squarely athwartships by means of a span, afforded, after all, only the merest apology for a sea-anchor, and barely gave just sufficient drag to keep the boats stem- on to the sea without appreciably retarding their drift to leeward; but it was none the worse for this, since, with their drift scarcely retarded, they rode all the more easily; and presently, when the oil began to exude from the can and diffuse itself over the surface of the water, there was a narrow space just ahead of us where the seas ceased ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... fell in with Lieutenant Fabius Stanley, United States Navy, and we rode into Yerba Buena together about an hour before sundown, there being nothing but a path from the Mission into the town, deep and heavy with drift-sand. My horse could hardly drag one foot after the other when we reached the old Hudson Bay Company's house, which was then the store of Howard and Mellus. There I learned where Captain Folsom, the quartermaster, was to be found. ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... and I drift along Far down the stream to its utmost bound, And the thick white foam-flakes gathering strong Still cling, and ...
— Poems • Sophia M. Almon

... with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations, and whether the confinement of the rooms and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system,—a ...
— Short-Stories • Various

... need of expressing it. The proof of the pudding is in the eating! The case is simply this. I desire immensely to be near Christina Light, and it is such a huge refreshment to find myself again desiring something, that I propose to drift with the current. As I say, she has waked me up, and it is possible something may come of it. She makes me feel as if I were alive again. This," and he glanced down at ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... greatest is yet to come. At the fourth sitting a new person, Professor Cardarelli, was introduced, and this new sitter disturbed conditions. Nevertheless, the inexplicable took place. Small twirling violet flames were seen to drift across the cabinet curtains, and hands and closed fists appeared over Paladino's head. These have been photographed, by-the-way. Some of them were of ordinary size, and others at least three times larger than the psychic's ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... of a certaine kinde of men, allured by the noble fame of Plato, and the great commendation of hys profound and profitable doctrine. But when such Hearers, after long harkening to him, perceaued, that the drift of his discourses issued out, to conclude, this Vnum, Bonum, and Ens, to be Spirituall, Infinite, Aeternall, Omnipotent, &c. Nothyng beyng alledged or expressed, How, worldly goods: how, worldly dignitie: how, health, Strength or lustines of body: nor yet the meanes, how a merueilous sensible ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee

... out to the thick edge of the shore-ice and launched the canoe among a whirling drift of ice-pans, we had small hope of ever seeing Fort Bourbon again. The ice had not the thickness of the spring jam, but it was sharp enough to cut our canoe, and we poled our way far oftener than we paddled. Where ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... watched very closely, and the amount of sail carried will depend entirely upon the weather conditions. A yacht should never be overloaded with sail. If she has more than she can comfortably carry she will heel over and drag her sails in the water. Not only this, but she will also drift to leeward when beating to windward. When sailing a new boat, her best trim for various points of sailing and force of wind must be found by painstaking experiments. The boat should always be sailed with her sails as ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates

... show the general drift of expression: "It is a feast of good food for the soul."—A. C. D. "The Journal is a literary feast of which I am more than proud to be a partaker."—W. S. "Your "Moral Education" is one of the very best books ever written, and one of the greatest as well. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, May 1887 - Volume 1, Number 4 • Various

... must begin by acknowledging that the ancient art, the art of unconscious intelligence, as one should call it, which began without a date, at least so long ago as those strange and masterly scratchings on mammoth-bones and the like found but the other day in the drift— that this art of unconscious intelligence is all but dead; that what little of it is left lingers among half-civilised nations, and is growing coarser, feebler, less intelligent year by year; nay, it is mostly ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris

... guilty of less than ourselves." Alexander's History of Women, John Paul Ribera's work upon Women, the two huge quartos of De Costa upon the same subject, Count Segur's "Women: Their Condition and Influence," and many other works showed the drift of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... hermetically sealed, except that Mooney's and Ward's and Romano's are open. Along its splendid length parade crowds and crowds of Jew couples and other wanderers from the far regions. They look lost. They look like a Cup Tie crowd from the North. They don't walk; they drift. They look helpless; they have an air expressive of: "Well, what the devil shall we do now?" I have a grim notion that members of the London County Council, observing them—if, that is, members of the London County ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... and jovial. Baldness was beginning to show at thirty-five. His stubby mustache was as unmanageable as the masters of St. Wilbur's had found its owner to be. He had never affected anything, for he had always been openly whatever he allowed himself to drift into. Neither of his friends liked many of his actions, nor the stories told of him; but they liked him personally and were inclined to be silently sorry for him, but not to sit in judgment upon him. Both Orville and Callovan waited and ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley

... prisoners. Being unable to reach China, they land at Cochinchina, "where the king of Tunquin seizes their cargo, and two large pieces of artillery embarked for the expedition to Maluco, the royal standard, and all the jewels, ornaments, and money. He let the galley drift ashore." The news causes great lamentation in Manila. "Some of those who hated the governor rejoiced, but their wrath immediately vanished and they wept generally." ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair

... languages. I found at Airolo regular files of Swiss journals printed respectively in French, Italian, and German: the last entirely baffled me; the two former I read after a fashion, making out some of their contents' purport and drift. Those in French, printed at Geneva, Lausanne, &c., were executed far more neatly than the others. All were of small size, and in good part devoted to spirited political discussion. Switzerland, though profoundly Republican, is almost equally ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley

... through the storm, in the vain hope that somebody would hear and come. Somebody had heard, but no one had come; and so in the cold and the darkness, with the snow sifting through every crevice and blowing down the wide chimney to the hearth where it made a drift like a grave, she had battled for her own life and that of the child beside her, saving the latter ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes

... European oscillation, which ended in the production of the drift (the boulder clay, or till), was effected during a time of vast, but unknown length. And if we limit our inquiries, and ask what was the interval of time between the newest bed of gravel near Cambridge, and the oldest bed of bogland or silt in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, we are utterly ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... life, like the great world outside. At three or four o'clock, in the gray dawn, fishermen appear, singly, or two by two; there is often then a failure of wind, and they have to get out to sea by heavy rowing or by the drift of the tide. Then there is silence for some hours, and when the world awakes the cove is nearly deserted. At seven o'clock begins the life of the shop. Amateur fishermen appear,—boarders from New York or visiting sons from Brockton. ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... land. They advised him to remain in the barge, at a little distance from the shore, and to address the people from the deck. The king resolved to do so. So the barge lay floating on the river, the oarsmen taking a few strokes from time to time to recover the ground lost by the drift of the current. The king stood upon the deck of the barge, with his officers around him, and asked the men on the shore what ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... said one of the young men. "It was an old one, and now the side is stove in. Let it go. It will drift ashore anyhow, and we can get it later if we want to. You might save the paddles if you can. I'll ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Christmas Tree Cove • Laura Lee Hope

... ground under man's feet, moreover, feels the molding hand of climate. In one region a former age of excessive cold has glaciated the surface and scoured off the fertile loam down to the underlying rock, or left the land coated with barren glacial drift or more productive clays. In another, the cold still persists and caps the land with ice and snow, or, as in the tundra, underlays it with a stratum of frozen earth, which keeps the surface wet and chilled even in the height of summer. In yet other regions, abundant moisture combined with ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... Korean question caused much anxiety. It was impossible for the Tokyo statesmen to ignore the fact that their country's safety depended largely on preserving Korea from the grasp of a Western power. They saw plainly that such a result might at any moment be expected if Korea was suffered to drift into a state of administrative incompetence. Once, in 1882, and again, in 1884, when Chinese soldiers were employed to suppress reform movements which would have impaired the interests of the Korean monarch, the latter's ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... out whether she was pleased to listen to his congratulations, or angry, or merely indifferent. It was rather a humiliating position for a clever man—for a critic who knew himself to be capable of understanding most things, of catching the drift of most thoughts, however imperfectly expressed. He was vaguely conscious of defeat. He felt that he was nonplussed by a pair of soft round eyes like the eyes of a kitten, and the dignified repose of a pair of demure red lips. Both eyes ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... cedar-tree. But next day the storm continued, it grew colder, and the drifts piled up all day. At night, the snow-fall ceased, but the frost grew harder still, so Redruff, leading the family to a birch-tree above a deep drift, dived into the snow, and the others did the same. Then into the holes the wind blew the loose snow—their pure white bed-clothes, and thus tucked in they slept in comfort, for the snow is a warm wrap, and ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... they were far enough out to sea, and far enough from any craft in those waters. Not a stick or a stack of another vessel showed within ten miles of them. The scow was accordingly cast loose and allowed to drift. ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham

... it must have been, but anybody could have foretold the end. As to Flynn, he was working on the Central Pacific Railway with his mate, a married man, when they found the whole concern giving way. And Flynn set his back against the wall in the dark drift, and held the timbers that were ready to fall, and sang out to Jake to run for his ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... sustained by intense religious beliefs, extreme sympathy or sorrow for her (as he might be were she compelled by some great trouble or duty to be absent), it is impossible for him not to grow in a measure forgetful of his ideals of constancy, and to drift into bachelor habits of distraction. Men do a thousand and one things for amusement which no woman could or would. Gilded and glittering halls of vice are inviting the inspection and patronage of men who are left at home by journeying and ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... indifference or ingratitude of Port Phillip in thus seeking separation, instanced for the contrary the recent event of the arrival from Melbourne of a deputation from the Anti-Transportation League, in order to help Sydney in promoting its good cause. The instant his drift was detected, the Speaker, Dr. (Sir Charles) Nicholson, apprehensive, doubtless, of some undesirable scene on that too sensational subject, rose to call peremptorily the honourable member to order, and to the non-transgression of his proper ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth

... calmly and with no outward sign of feeling except that, as he got toward the end of his speech and his drift became open and manifest, his voice gained more and more emphasis as he saw the undisguised impatience and growing anger of Charles. The Prince paid no courteous attention to the arguments of his chief ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough

... size as they were when first I saw them, and I asked no questions. But by the time that I was ten years old, I knew the name of the reach of the river, and every point—the depth of water, and the shallows, the drift of the current, and the ebb and flow of the tide itself. I was able to manage the lighter as it floated down with the tide; for what I lacked in strength I made up with ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... but, obstinate and angry, Apian tries to force the steamer to give way. The result is disastrous. The steamer catches in the towing cables and drags the horses into the water. The boats drift back and are hurled against a bridge. William and the Anglore are thrown into the river and are lost. All the others escape with their lives. Jean Roche is not sure but that he was the Drac after all, who, foreseeing the shipwreck, had thus followed the boats, to carry the Anglore at last down ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer

... containing the captive on one side in the bottom of the boat, and hauled in the rest, which contained nothing but a sickly green, mottled-looking wrasse of about a couple of pounds weight. Then the lines, cords, and anchors were got on board, and, leaving the boat to drift with the sharp current which carried it onward, the old man drew a long, sharp-pointed knife from its sheath, and cautiously turned ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... ain't bought once. Say, Bo," he continued to me as I was striving to divine the drift of these comments, "have I got my fingers ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... no way inferiour to the best in the other, which we call the main River. So far as we could discern, this seem'd as fair, if not fairer, than the former, and we think runs farther into the Country, because a strong Current comes down, and a great deal more Drift-Wood. But, to return to the Business of the Land and Timber: We saw several Plots of Ground clear'd by the Indians, after their weak manner, compass'd round with great Timber Trees, which they are no-wise able to fell, and so keep the Sun from Corn-Fields very much; yet nevertheless, we saw as large ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson

... their form was more decided than their foundation; they exhibited minds animated by a noble impulse, but not directed to any single or certain end; and open to an easy, unrestricted course, which excited apprehension that they might themselves drift towards the rocks they cautioned others to avoid. At the same time the spirit of partisanship, inclining men to be wrapped up and isolated in the narrow circle of their immediate associates, without ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... she staved off a personal drift in the conversation. "It's getting darker," she said, looking ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... The current of educated thought runs strongly against such beliefs, and I suppose that every thoughtful man among us feels that a great danger to our faith to-day comes from the force with which that current swings us round, and threatens to make some of us drag our anchors, and drift, and strike and go to pieces on the sands. For one man who is led by the sheer force of reason to yield to the intellectual grounds on which modern unbelief reposes, there are twenty who simply catch the infection in the atmosphere. They find ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... not in love: that was certain. Marjory was not in love: that also was certain. This was why he was able to light his cigarette, lean back his head on the pillow she arranged, and drift into a state of dreamy content as she read to him. This happy arrangement might go on forever except that, in the course of time, his shoulder was bound to heal. And then—he knew well enough that old Dame Society was even at the end of these first ten days beginning to fidget. ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... England; what must become thereof?" But Charles II, who knew little of economic matters, and cared nothing for the welfare of the colonists, ignored Bland's convincing appeal. No alleviation was given Virginia, and she was allowed to drift on through ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... The drift of disaffection into Spain was held at first to be of little moment. The battle of Thapsus, the final breaking up of the senatorial party, and the deaths of its leaders, were supposed to have brought an end at last to the divisions which had so long convulsed the Empire. ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... doors to me proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring, Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made, The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing, A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect, But you ye untold latencies will thrill ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... and annoyance to them. Of pleasure, when the days were fair, and Sybil and Frank could pull their boat up stream, and land at the grassy slope in the rear of Wardour Place, where, often, they found Constance and a gay party awaiting them. Or, when Constance could drift down stream with scarcely the stroke of an oar necessary, until she came opposite "the hill," as Mapleton was often called. Of annoyance, when winds blew cold and rough, and the waters of the river turned black and angry, and surged high between its banks. Then the two young ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch

... another," the snowflakes said, As they cuddled down in their fleecy bed, "One of us here would not be felt, One of us here would quickly melt; But I'll help you and you help me, And then what a splendid drift there'll be." ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various

... intelligent eyes assured me that he retained all his reason. Then, too, I was used to his broken way of talking, which only left me puzzled as to his meaning, till, with a very few clear, rapidly uttered words, he would make the drift of his ideas clear to me, and I saw that what he had previously said, and which had appeared to me void of meaning, was so thoroughly logical that I could not understand how it was I had ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux

... colored, for she now began to perceive the drift of her friend's remark. "It was very wrong," she said, ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... unfavourable year or two would form the foot of the upper wall. This seems more probable, from the loose constitution of the floor at the point where it joins the stones, as if it were there only made up of drift and debris, while the part of the floor nearer the foot of the wall is solid ice. It has been suggested to me that possibly water accumulates in the time of greatest thaw to a very large extent in the lower parts of the cave, and the ice-floor is formed ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... a white man under a hat like a cart-wheel beckoning persistently with his whole arm. Examining the edge of the forest above and below, I was almost certain I could see movements—human forms gliding here and there. I steamed past prudently, then stopped the engines and let her drift down. The man on the shore began to shout, urging us to land. 'We have been attacked,' screamed the manager. 'I know—I know. It's all right,' yelled back the other, as cheerful as you please. 'Come along. It's all right. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... he smiled, "On-na-tak's h'our only chance. Current sets that way h'at three knots an hour. That means we'll drift there in four or five days. There'll be driftwood on the beach, and, with good luck, we can fix 'er up there. Mayhap there's coal in the banks by the sea, and that's greater luck for ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell

... little. He tried again and again. There was a little more distance gained. He tried to build the picture of the operating-room in his mind and while he was doing this a flash of Vivian exploded his mind. With that quick image, he felt himself free to drift downward. ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren

... to work out plans to forward economic development from a lamentably low base. In December 2003, the World Bank, IMF, and UNDP were forced to step in to provide emergency budgetary support in the amount of $107 million for 2004, representing over 80% of the total national budget. Government drift and indecision, however, resulted in continued low growth in 2002-06. Higher raw material prices boosted growth ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Montesinos.—I perceive your drift: and perceive also that when we understand each other there is likely to be little difference between us. And I beseech you, do not suppose that I am disputing for the sake of disputation; with that pernicious habit I was never infected, and I have seen too many mournful proofs of its perilous ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... anchor to windward, as they say down here. If I lost you, goodness knows where I should drift. Don't you ever talk ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a few pieces of drift-wood, and having secured their arms and provisions, commenced ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... smooth, round pebbles, from the size of a pigeon's egg to that of a two-hundred-pound boulder, are all jumbled together in great confusion, and so firmly cemented in this immense globular mass of that peculiar, tenacious clay of greenish gray color, which forms so large a part of the drift formation, and which is so widely distributed over the face of our globe—that strange, unaccountable, isolated and unrelated formation, which still remains an unsolved puzzle by our best geologists. I wish you to observe the long sides of this strange rock, especially where the exposed ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson

... Kerry, "that we drift. Once in Limehouse Reach we'll hear him. There are no pleasure ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... smiths at their forges Worked the red St. George's Cannoneers, And the villainous saltpetre Rung a fierce, discordant meter Round their ears; As the swift Storm drift, With hot sweeping anger, came the horseguards' clangor On our flanks; Then higher, higher, higher, burned the old-fashioned ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various

... Christianity.—For a generation or more in every part of Christendom there has been a steady drift away from organised religion as represented by the churches, and the question is being seriously asked whether Christianity can much longer hold its own. Protestant controversialists frequently draw attention to the decline of church-going ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... number of women who will enter the professions and remain in them on the conditions above stated will be relatively small. The main function of women will always be childbearing. If ever there comes a time when the drift will be away from this function, then a counter-movement will start up to sway women back into this sphere of their functions. Moreover, the bulk of women entering industry will enter it in the humbler occupations ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson

... that there is neither romance nor comfort in waiting at your own or at any one else's door on a windy and rainy day, till the servant comes from the end of the house to open it. You all know the critical nature of that opening—the drift of wind into the passage, the impossibility of putting down the umbrella at the proper moment without getting a cupful of water dropped down the back of your neck from the top of the door-way; and you know how little these inconveniences are abated by the common Greek portico at the top of the steps. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... ne'er leavest, Genius, Thou wilt wrap up warmly In the snow-drift; Tow'rd the warmth approach the Muses, Tow'rd the warmth approach ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... some seconds headed towards its intended course, but it could not struggle against the wind; instead of going back, on the contrary it drifted farther and farther away. And ill-luck had it that the drift took the direction towards part of the School of Musketry, which was guarded by posts and barriers. Frightened at the prospect of breaking ourselves against these obstacles, surprised at seeing the earth ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian

... reopened with a violent speech from Hunt denouncing the whole thing as a delusion; that the people begin to find out how they are humbugged, and that as it will make nothing cheaper they don't care about it. The man's drift is not very clear whether the Bill is really unpalatable at Preston or whether he wants to go further directly. At the same time John Russell announced some alterations in the Bill, not, as he asserted, trenching ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville

... neighbourhood of Oxford is low and flat, and except where a few lights marked the outskirts of the city a wall of darkness shut them in, permitting nothing to be seen that lay more than a few paces away. A grey drift of clouds, luminous in comparison with the gloom about them, moved slowly overhead, and out of the night the raving of a farm-dog or the creaking of a dry bough came to the ear with ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman

... movement showed a tendency to drift back into a refined paganism. In the North, however, it was deeply Christian in interest, in feeling, and in its moral aspirations. Erasmus was by far the greatest figure and the most influential person in the group of Humanists of this ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... as one in a trance, but by certain gesticulations, it appeared that his skysails were not so shattered that he did not comprehend the drift of the question, and after much tugging and pulling at an old waistcoat, which was worn beneath the round-about, he produced a roll, which, from twenty years' wear, it having been his constant companion during that ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale

... of education carried on in so purely empirical a way. We are deeply impressed with its necessity; we are eager in our efforts, but we are always in the condition of one "whom too great eagerness bewilders." We are ready to drift in any direction on the subject. We adopt every new idea that presents itself. We recognize our errors in one direction, and in our efforts to prevent those we fall into quite as dangerous ones on the other side. More than in any other country, then, it were well for ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett

... geologizing. So he and Leslie—Dakie Thayne, in his unswerving devotion, still accompanying—"sidled off" together, took a long turn round under the crest, talking very pleasantly—and restfully, after Sin Saxon's continuous brilliancy—all the way. How they searched among loose drift under the cliff, how Mr. Scherman improvised a hammer from a slice of rock; and how, after many imperfect specimens, they did at last "find a-purpose" an irregular oval of dull, dusky stone, which burst with a stroke into two chalices of incrusted crimson ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... you must back again. Rafael, too! Both my young soldiers! My right arm and my left,— Though which is which I know not. Ignacio, You saw the Austrian? No matter. He's but The drift-piece of a rotten monarchy That thinks to graft upon the living tree Of our new-sprung republic! We'll shake him off As a June oak a spray of winter wreck, Nor ever know he clung upon ...
— Semiramis and Other Plays - Semiramis, Carlotta And The Poet • Olive Tilford Dargan

... still laughing, but with more moderation, "I should advise you to depute me to make a fair copy of the letter; else, from the extreme ambiguity of your handwriting, he will most likely mistake your drift, and imagine that you ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton

... had not completed her task. Aunt Ju had evidently been false and treacherous, but might still be won back to loyal honesty. So much Mary gradually perceived to be the drift of the lady's mind. Lady Selina was hopeless. Lady Selina, whom the Baroness intended to drag before all the judges in England, would do nothing fair or honest; but Aunt Ju might yet be won. Would Lady George go with the Baroness to Aunt Ju? The servant had unfortunately just announced ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... depths! At intervals, the floor of the chasm is left nearly dry; but anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are seen struggling to get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while one rushes straight through, and all three thunder, as if with rage and triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray. While watching this scene, I can never rid myself of the idea that a monster, endowed with life and fierce energy, is striving to burst his way through the narrow pass. And what a contrast, to look ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... slumbered on below the level of the world's great risen floods of emancipations and enfranchisements whereon party platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... pleasure the downfall of Christianity, you would only consider how infinitely indebted European humanity is to it, and to the religion which, after the lapse of some time, followed Christianity from its old home in the East! Europe received from it a drift which had hitherto been unknown to it—it learnt the fundamental truth that life cannot be an end-in-itself, but that the true end of our existence lies beyond it. The Greeks and Romans had placed this end absolutely in life itself, so that, in this sense, they may most certainly be called blind ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... deficient, perhaps, in strength of will, but very generally liked, and with the making of a fine man about him; and yet he was likely, from sheer easiness of temper and disinclination to settle down to anything, to drift with the stream till he ruined his life. That is how I read his character from what I have heard of him, and that being so, I think this complete break in his life may ultimately be of considerable ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty

... woman, who looked as if she might have been cut out of one of the glaciers of Monte Rosa, but in whose heart the little fair one had made herself a niche, pushing her way up through, as you may have seen a lovely blue-fringed gentian standing in a snow-drift of the Alps with its little ring of melted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various

... rough work shaped out a man Whom this beneath-world doth embrace and hug With amplest entertainment: my free drift Halts not particularly, but moves itself In a wide sea of wax; no levell'd malice Infects one comma in the course I hold; But flies an eagle flight, bold and forth on, Leaving ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... getting the drift of her remarks. "'Tis natural, ma'am; for, you see, 'tis a long run and a heavy grade, and hard to ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... excitable nature of young men who become inflamed by the preparations for war, and who in such a war as this will be, if it goes on, are apt to go in on the side that gives the first opportunity. The young men must not be permitted to drift away from us. I know that the men who voted against me in Kentucky will not permit this Government to be swept away by any such issue as that framed ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... high gods took in hand Fire, and the falling of tears, And a measure of sliding sand From under the feet of the years; And froth and drift of the sea, And dust of the laboring earth; And bodies of things to be In the houses of death and of birth; And wrought with weeping and laughter, And fashioned with loathing and love, With life before and after, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various

... blessed the snow-storm, and were glad to see it come thicker and thicker, and watched hopefully the long drift that was piling itself up in the avenue, and was already higher than any of ...
— The Paradise of Children - (From: "A Wonder-Book For Girls and Boys") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... should judge that nature had endowed you with a fine bump of drift, Humphrey. But has it not been rather well cared for? The trouble with drifting is, so say the preachers, that ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... some five or six in number, situated within half a mile of the sea, separated only by a high bank of drift sand, covered for the most part with the low jungle which clothes the surrounding country. Flat plains of a sandy nature form the margins of the lakes. The little town of Hambantotte, with a good harbor for small craft, is about twenty miles distant, ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... wilderness is bounded only by the distant Red Sea. Between these two huge and barren expanses Nubia writhes like a green sandworm along the course of the river. Here and there it disappears altogether, and the Nile runs between black and sun-cracked hills, with the orange drift-sand lying like glaciers in their valleys. Everywhere one sees traces of vanished races and submerged civilisations. Grotesque graves dot the hills or stand up against the sky-line: pyramidal graves, tumulus graves, rock graves—everywhere, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle

... with my failing hand, Hold fast to that I love so well, Till thine clasps but an empty shell, Amid the drift-weed on the sand. ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... The dark seemed to drift quickly down, that night, because her supper had been delayed, and she washed her dishes by lamplight. When she had quite finished, and taken off her apron, she stood a moment over the chest, before sitting down to her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... over, as like pieces of drift, horse and rider were swept away, but fortune does sometime favor the brave and, being caught in a powerful current, Caliente was carried South of the headland and his progress towards the sea was stayed by a rock that rose high, ...
— Frontier Boys on the Coast - or in the Pirate's Power • Capt. Wyn Roosevelt

... sound; the swell is strong; Though the wind hath fallen, they drift along, Till the vessel strikes with a shivering shock,— "O Christ! it ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... I can't make out a theory that suits me," he mused aloud. "If any one has been riding out this way and lost it, will they perhaps return and look for it? Yet if I leave it where I found it the sand might drift over it at any time. And surely, in this sparsely settled country, I shall be able to at least hear of any strangers who might have carried such a foolish little thing. Then, too, if I leave it where I found it some one might steal it. Well, I guess we'll take it with ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... is the cost of a drift of nets at Wick?-They usually have 40 nets there now, and the cost of a net is about 3, so that a boat and nets would ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie

... bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little the people were dispersed to drift together again by chance—in smaller numbers—several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or four special ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... principles won't admit of his drinking; but that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur had best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales, for it's so calm they won't drift." ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... WADE—First my lord Cobham confesseth it, and after he had subscribed it, he revoked it again: to me he always said, that the drift of it was ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scattering, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothing, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... go there. I don't belong there any more than you do here. Better drift back to Tucson, stranger. The parada is no place for a tenderfoot. You're in luck you're not shy one li'l' girl tromped to death. Take a fool's advice and hit the trail for town pronto before you bump ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine

... Vessels and boats when fishing with drift nets shall exhibit two white lights from any part of the vessel where they can best be seen. Such lights shall be placed so that the vertical distance between them shall be not less than 6 feet and not more than 10 feet, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... No drift or dream of passing bell, Dying afar in twilight dell, Hath any heard, Whose chimes have stirred More ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter

... inland navigations. On canals barges are usually towed, but are sometimes fitted with some kind of engine; the men in charge of them are known as bargees. On tidal rivers barges are often provided with masts and sails ("sailing barges"), or in default of being towed, they drift with the current, guided by a long oar or oars ("dumb-barges"). Barges used for unloading, or loading, the cargo of ships in harbours are sometimes called "lighters" (from the verb "to light" to relieve of a load). A state barge was a heavy, often highly ornamented vessel ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... as a snow-drift is formed where there is a lull in the wind, so, one would say, where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various



Words linked to "Drift" :   go, survive, melioration, pasture, stream, mining, gravitation, vary, linguistic process, evolutionary trend, tendency, plane, excavation, natural action, aeroplane, change, waft, gather, natural process, ship, mass, pile up, airplane, wander, drumlin, amass, passageway, tenor, action, tide, graze, force, live, locomote, blow, leeway, conglomerate, stray, maunder, drive, gallivant, exist, circulate, strain, accumulate, cumulate, inclination, move, crop, gad, subsist, disposition, jazz around, activity, travel



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