adrift
adjective [after verb] /əˈdrɪft/Definition
› If a boat is adrift, it is moving on the water but is not controlled by anyone because of a problem: He spent three days adrift on his yacht.Terms for location and direction used at sea › If a person is adrift, they do not have a clear purpose in life or know what they want to do: Da Silva plays a bright, lonely student from New York, adrift in small-town Arizona.Useless and futile go/come adrift informal › to become loose: The hem of my skirt's come adrift again.Flexible, loose and yielding go adrift informal › If plans go adrift, they fail or do not produce the correct results: Something seems to have gone adrift in our calculations.Faults and mistakes
(Definition of adrift adjective from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus
© Cambridge University Press)
Browse the Dictionary
Browse the Thesaurus
SMART Thesaurus
Synonyms and related words:
- a mug's game idiom
- aimless adjective
- airy-fairy adjective
- be at a loose end idiom
- be chasing your tail idiom
- fool's errand noun
- for the hell of it idiom
- frivolous adjective
- fruitless adjective
- futile adjective
- no-good adjective
- nugatory adjective
- ornamental adjective
- otiose adjective
- outlive your usefulness idiom
- until you are blue in the face idiom
- unwieldy adjective (NOT EFFECTIVE)
- useless adjective
- vain adjective (NOT SUCCESSFUL)
- vainly adverb
Topic:
Useless and futile
You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:
Word of the Day
Blog
Read our blog about how the English language behaves.
New Words
Find words and meanings that have just started to be used in English, and let us know what you think of them.
