drifter

The tag was also, incidentally, a play on “The Blue Dahlia,” a 1946 movie written by Raymond Chandler and starring Veronica Lake as a plucky drifter who helps the hero track down his wife’s murderer.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 23, 2026

A drifter and petty criminal, he had spent much of his time between 2000 and 2017 in the Algarve.

From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2025

This drifter comes in and says there is nothing wrong with this Asian family, and folks should resist groupthink.

From Salon ● Jan. 19, 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

Or it could be a drifter who had come through town and they’d buried him where he’d dropped dead.

From "Moon Over Manifest" by Clare Vanderpool

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

It has become an oasis for the disaffected, the drifters and the curious who are trying to escape the cutthroat competition and suffocating political environment of China’s megacities.

From New York Times ● Feb. 4, 2024

Where the old drifters keep moving sign used to hang, a new billboard in fancy lettering read: “You’re in trouble right there,” Mary Alice remarked to me.

From "A Long Way from Chicago" by Richard Peck