driftwood means floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.
driftwood is pronounced /ˈdɹɪftwʊd/.
Why “driftwood” is a great word
Driftwood is wood that has been carried and often smoothed by floating on water, especially such wood cast ashore. From the English words drift ('to be carried along by a current') + wood ('hard fibrous material from a tree'), first attested in the 1630s. Unlike timber, which implies purposeful cultivation and utility, or flotsam, which suggests the chaotic wreckage of disaster, driftwood is defined by its quiet, solitary journey—shaped not by saw or flame but by tide, wind, and time. It is a sun-bleached branch at the high-tide line, a silvered root gnawed into a soft sculpture, a smooth, skeletal limb half-buried in wet sand—the silent record of dissolution and return, where utility is worn away and only beauty remains.
Etymology
From drift + wood.
noun
- Floating wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.e.g.“Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon.” — 1967, Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America:
- Such a piece of wood that has been cast ashore.e.g.“Commonly the bear makes a stand in driftwood on a bank, or on a log that has fallen into or across a stream.” — 1915 April 7, Enos A. Mills, The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 198–199:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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