Adrift means floating with no power and no control. Set adrift, cut adrift, drifting adrift for days.
The literal sense is nautical and serious: a boat adrift goes where the wind and current take it. Figuratively a person adrift has lost direction, and in sport a team is adrift when it trails by a gap. Note that it is a- plus drift, formed like afloat and ashore.
1adjectiveadriftFloating with no power and no control.
“After the engine failed, the small boat was adrift at sea for days.”
2adjectivetrailingTrailing by a gap, in sport.
“After three defeats in a row, the club is ten points adrift at the bottom of the table.”
adrift is a state of drifting.
Proto-Indo-European
*dʰreybʰ- — to drive, push
Proto-Germanic
*driftiz — drift
Old English
*drift — drift
Middle English
drift
English
drift
English, today
adrift
Built from
From a- + drift. drift comes from Middle English drift, dryft (“act of driving, drove, shower of rain or snow, impulse”), from Old English drift (“drift”), from Proto-Germanic driftiz (“drift”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”). Equivalent to drive + t; cognate with frr drift (“drift”), stq Drift (“current, flow, stream, drift”), Dutch drift (“drift, passion, urge”), German Drift (“drift”) and Trift (“drove, pasture”), Danish drift (“impulse, instinct”), Swedish drift (“impulse, instinct”), Icelandic drift (“drift, snow-drift”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA