driftwood

• drift wood
• drift-wood

drift +‎ wood

• IPA^(key): /ˈdɹɪftwʊd/

• Audio (Southern England)

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driftwood (usually uncountable, plural driftwoods)

1. A floating piece, or pieces, of wood that drifts with the current of a body of water.
   • 1967, Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America:

     Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon.

2. Such a piece of wood that has been cast ashore.
   • 1915 April, Enos A. Mills, The Rocky Mountain Wonderland, Houghton Mifflin, →LCCN, →OCLC, pages 198–199:

     Commonly the bear makes a stand in driftwood on a bank, or on a log that has fallen into or across a stream.

   • 1941 March 12, Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, published 1970, page 461:

     We lit a driftwood fire to help keep the mosquitoes away. It was partially successful.

   • 1987, Gene Wolfe, chapter LI, in The Urth of the New Sun, 1st US edition, New York: Tor Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 309:

     A few unreliable-looking boats were beached there, unpainted boats built largely of gray driftwood, or so it seemed to me.

• flotsam
• jetsam