drifter

A swaggering drifter named Hal Carter arrives in town looking for work, and by sunset he has thrown the community, especially the fragile Madge Owens, into emotional turmoil.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 2, 2026

A drifter, he lived in Portugal's Algarve region, on and off, for years.

From BBC ● May 9, 2025

Benji, something of a chatty drifter, has never quite found himself, at least not by David’s standards.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 6, 2024

It might have helped if Siff had a sturdier partner, but Alexander’s wan emo sensibility lacks the haunted charisma of a sexy drifter attempting to move on from his past.

From New York Times ● Jul. 18, 2023

McCandless had tried to disguise the fact that he was a drifter living out of a backpack: He told his fellow employees that he lived across the river in Laughlin.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer

In “Moby-Dick,” Herman Melville describes Nantucket as an “ant hill in the sea,” an isolated outpost for whalers and drifters.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026

Collected by gliders, floats and drifters, these instruments provide valuable information about the most turbulent region of the hurricane environment, called the boundary layer, where the air meets the ocean.

From BBC ● Aug. 29, 2025

Juliette Lewis has played murderers, drifters, alcoholics, punk rockers, Reiki healers and roller-derby captains.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2025

In San Antonio and Butte and Cheyenne and Reliance they would meet miners, rodeo hands, slaughterhouse workers, bartenders, drifters, janitors and motel maids.

From New York Times ● Apr. 25, 2023

Then we saw the swinging lanterns, the sheriff and his deputies coming along behind to keep the drifters moving.

From "A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck