Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Deviation from a set course caused by drifting.
  • noun Matter that has been carried along or deposited by air or water currents.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun That which is drifted; drift.
  • noun Nautical, the amount of deviation from a ship's course due to leeway.
  • noun In gunnery and archery, windage.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Deviation from a ship's course due to leeway.
  • noun Anything that drifts.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Deviation from a ship's course due to leeway.
  • noun Anything that drifts.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the deviation (by a vessel or aircraft) from its intended course due to drifting

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

drift +‎ -age

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Examples

  • And here, at the end of it all, I pore over books of astronomy from the prison library, such as they allow condemned men to read, and learn that even the heavens are passing fluxes, vexed with star - driftage as the earth is by the drifts of men.

    Chapter 21 2010

  • I see and know and possess incorporated in my consciousness of the mighty driftage of the races in the times before our present written history began!

    Chapter 21 2010

  • Elsinore, this time due to me and my own stubbornness, is rolling in the wind and heading nowhere in a light breeze at the rate of nothing but driftage per hour.

    CHAPTER XLVI 2010

  • Despite the fact that by his manoeuvre the Arangi had been hove to, he knew that windage and sea-driftage would quickly send her away from the swimming puppy.

    CHAPTER VI 2010

  • So, instead of making speed through the water toward deep sea, I hove the Elsinore to on the starboard tack with no more than leeway driftage to the west and south.

    CHAPTER XLVI 2010

  • Also they were scrubs – the dirty driftage of the fight game, without honor, without efficiency.

    The Mexican 2010

  • The sunset fires, refracted from the cloud-driftage of the autumn sky, bathed the canyon with crimson, in which ruddy-limbed mandronos and wine-wooded manzanitas burned and smoldered.

    CHAPTER XVII 2010

  • The driftage through the Big House was decreasing.

    CHAPTER XVII 2010

  • Lavina, famed for her good heart even among the driftage of

    THE PROUD GOAT OFALOYSIUS PANKBURN 2010

  • I tell you this vagrant fisherman, this wandering preacher, this piece of driftage from Galilee, commanded me.

    Chapter 17 2010

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