3. Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting. "Our drift was south." Hakluyt.
4. The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim. He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general. Addison. Now thou knowest my drift. Sir W. Scott.
5. That which is driven, forced, or urged along; as: (a) Anything driven at random. "Some log . . . a useless drift." Dryden. (b) A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like. Drifts of rising dust involve the sky. Pope. We got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift [of ice]. Kane.
(c) A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds. [Obs.] Cattle coming over the bridge (with their great drift doing much damage to the high ways). Fuller.
6. (Arch.)
Defn: The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments. [R.] Knight.
7. (Geol.)
Defn: A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.
8. In South Africa, a ford in a river.
9. (Mech.)