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

To some, he was a rollicking drifter in ragamuffin punk tatters.

From BBC ● Dec. 2, 2023

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

He plays the laborer and the free-spirited drifter who would never succumb to the burdens of economic hardship.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 26, 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

Come November, as the weather turns cold across the rest of the country, some five thousand snowbirds and drifters and sundry vagabonds congregate in this otherworldly setting to live on the cheap under the sun.

From "Into the Wild" by Jon Krakauer