noun
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a person or thing that drifts
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a person who moves aimlessly from place to place, usually without a regular job
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a boat used for drift-net fishing
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nautical a large jib of thin material used in light breezes
Etymology
Origin of drifter
Explanation
An aimless wanderer, someone without a permanent home, is a drifter. Your distant cousin who parks his camper in your driveway for a few weeks and then moves on? You can call him a drifter. The original meaning of drifter was a miner whose job was excavating horizontal tunnels, which were known as drifts. Starting around 1880, it was also used for a type of fishing boat that used drift nets. For most of the 20th century, however, the most common use of drifter was to describe a vagrant, homeless person, or someone whose lifestyle involved drifting from place to place.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Based on the photos, the items appeared to be from companies like ALP Drifter Nicotine, Footlocker, Epson, DeepCool AI, Renkus-Heinz and Medicube.
From Los Angeles Times • May 1, 2026
Asked how it felt to suddenly become a Drifter, Mr. Thomas told Mr. Goldberg: “As a kid, I used to play hooky to see the Drifters at the Apollo. It felt good!”
From New York Times • Feb. 6, 2023
Air-pressure data from roughly 100 drifting ocean buoys deployed with the Global Drifter Program were coming into the hub as well.
From Scientific American • Sep. 17, 2022
The mystical space horse was first spotted in Destiny 2 during Season of the Drifter, and it has some links to the Nine, a mysterious faction inside Destiny’s universe.
From The Verge • Dec. 7, 2021
He sent one of his men to guard the Drifter, and, after a famous meal, made his guests agree to sleep in a comfortable bed for the first time in nearly a week.
From Dave Dashaway and His Hydroplane by Rockwood, Roy
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
