drift away
n · verb
Simple meaning
"Drift Away" is a song written by Mentor Williams in 1970 and first recorded by British singer Mike Berry on his 1972 album Drift Away.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
driftuhwaySay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈdɹɪftəweɪ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
n
"Drift Away" is a song written by Mentor Williams in 1970 and first recorded by British singer Mike Berry on his 1972 album Drift Away.
"Drift Away" is a song by New Zealand band Sons of Zion, released as a single in March 2018.
A 2021 French drama film written and directed by Xavier Beauvois.
verb
Lose personal contact over time
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: "Drift Away" is a song written by Mentor Williams in 1970 and first recorded by British singer Mike Berry on his 1972 album Drift Away.
Used this way, drift away is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.