How to Use drifter in a Sentence

drifter

noun
Definition of drifternext
Synonyms for drifternext
  • He was a drifter who hitchhiked from state to state.
  • David Suchy was a local drifter seen in the area that day, Bowhay says.
    — Peter Van Sant, CBS News, 18 July 2020
  • Matagorda - Winds were light, but so was the bite for drifters in East Bay.
    — Bink Grimes, Houston Chronicle, 9 Feb. 2018
  • Many of those leads, like a report of a drifter spotted in the area, went nowhere.
    — CBS News, 29 June 2019
  • The driver of the Orange Toyota was a 25-year-old drifter by the name of Richard Ramirez.
    — Paul Buchanan, Los Angeles Magazine, 15 May 2017
  • The owner of an ancient mill hires a drifter to rid the basement of rats.
    — Ed Stockly, Los Angeles Times, 19 Mar. 2021
  • That was the moment James, a 62-year-old drifter, took his place in the gallery of New York villains.
    — Mark Jacobson, Curbed, 25 Apr. 2022
  • This is where Kate Steinle was killed by a drifter with a gun four years ago.
    — Carl Nolte, SFChronicle.com, 31 Aug. 2019
  • Among the group was Bates, a 28-year-old, one-eyed drifter from Alabama.
    — Taylor Pettaway, San Antonio Express-News, 8 Apr. 2022
  • The Drifters will deliver decades of hits and even a new recording.
    — Denise Harris, star-telegram, 19 July 2017
  • The Wrong Man is based on a rock-song cycle by Ross Golan about a drifter framed for murder.
    — Adam Green, Vogue, 10 Sep. 2019
  • The film is, first and foremost, a Western, with the hard-drinking Jay Swan serving in the drifter-from-out-of-town role.
    — Kerry Lengel, azcentral, 15 Mar. 2018
  • Fishing was hottest around Dry Creek with plunkers and drifters using bait.
    — sacbee, 15 Jan. 2018
  • The Rockets are grim-visaged drifters spoiling for a shootout.
    — Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 12 May 2018
  • In the course of his research, Lumpkin has launched 1,250 devices called drifters into the ocean.
    — Nick Stockton, WIRED, 25 Feb. 2016
  • Adult fish could simply swim away to other areas, but not the young drifters.
    — Kelsey Ryan, kansascity, 6 July 2018
  • Cook played four years at Duke, then was undrafted and became the high plains drifter.
    — Scott Ostler, San Francisco Chronicle, 29 Mar. 2018
  • It’s a hammock, a drifter, a chair or even a piece of exercise equipment if that’s your kind of thing.
    — Kathleen Walsh, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Apr. 2022
  • Turning in slow circles at a depth of around 500 feet, the larval fish was — for the moment — a peaceful ocean drifter.
    — Biographic, Discover Magazine, 4 Nov. 2019
  • According to court records, Miller was a drifter who had been living in the home of a man who picked him up hitch-hiking.
    — Travis Loller, The Seattle Times, 28 Nov. 2018
  • Public records suggest that Selovich has roots in Missouri but has lived his adult life as a drifter.
    — Michelle Theriault Boots, Anchorage Daily News, 6 Dec. 2019
  • Galveston - Winds were light for most of the morning, which allowed drifters to target trout over deep shell.
    — Bink Grimes, Houston Chronicle, 11 Jan. 2018
  • When Shirlee returned, Theo would remind her about the Wisconsin drifter and the danger of this kind of life style.
    — Addie Citchens, The New Yorker, 5 Feb. 2024
  • Gone are Bulosan’s pea pickers, drifters and gamblers, hopping freight trains up and down the coast.
    — New York Times, 2 May 2018
  • Arwen thinks Cushion’s head looks like one of Richard Avedon’s road-trip portraits—one of the drifters.
    — Annie Proulx, The New Yorker, 30 June 2024
  • Hartzell a drifter who doesn’t drift much — a fixture among the transients who have found a permanent home in St. Paul’s North End.
    — Frederick Melo, Twin Cities, 23 Feb. 2017
  • Johnson, a drifter and ex-convict, was 24 when the murder took place, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
    — Nicole Acosta, Peoplemag, 24 Apr. 2023
  • An ex-con drifter who knows his way around a guitar and a ranch, Walker is wary of Yellowstone.
    — Chris Vognar, Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2022
  • Along with her guide, a drifter named Boyce, Gray is sent to the ghostly wilderness of the Lost Lands, where the pair must outwit and outfight man and demon.
    — Nick Romano, EW.com, 25 Feb. 2021
  • This new technology can kick in precisely in time to safeguard a driver and manage a loss of control, just as an expert drifter would.
    — New Atlas, 30 July 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'drifter.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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