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.
The tag was also, incidentally, a play on “The Blue Dahlia,” a 1946 movie written by Raymond Chandler and starring Veronica Lake as a plucky drifter who helps the hero track down his wife’s murderer.
From The Wall Street Journal • Jan. 23, 2026
“A man makes his choices,” Baldwin’s crusty, guilt-ridden drifter says to his grandkid at one point.
From Los Angeles Times • May 2, 2025
An unearthed archive of an art lover's interviews with an ageing LS Lowry have revealed he saw himself as "a drifter" who knew a lot of people but "never had a girl".
From BBC • Jun. 6, 2024
It might have helped if Siff had a sturdier partner, but Alexander’s wan emo sensibility lacks the haunted charisma of a sexy drifter attempting to move on from his past.
From New York Times • Jul. 18, 2023
McCandless had tried to disguise the fact that he was a drifter living out of a backpack: He told his fellow employees that he lived across the river in Laughlin.
From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer
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.
