get the drift

Idioms and Phrases

Also, catch the drift . Understand the general meaning or purport. For example, I didn't get the drift—do they want to go or not? or Over all the noise he barely managed to catch the drift of their conversation . The noun drift has been used for “purport” since the early 1500s.

Example Sentences

And if you don’t quite follow the lingo, you get the drift:

From Los Angeles Times

Reminiscence Hugh Jackman plays a “private investigator of the mind” who helps clients access lost memories in a dystopian future, and one day a mysterious woman walks into his office— you get the drift.

From The Verge

The wintry sun, coming in at a slant through the window, gave everything a frozen, precisely detailed look; nothing seemed real, and I felt as though this were some complicated film I’d started watching in the middle and couldn’t quite get the drift of.

From Literature

But you get the drift even without understanding the details: The states are saying that Google and Facebook colluded to help their own businesses at the expense of everyone else’s.

From New York Times

“How about national right to work? How about Davis-Bacon reform? How about ending junk lawsuits against doctors and hospitals? You get the drift,” McConnell continued.

From Washington Post

Related Words

• catch
• determine
• discover
• feature
• feel
• follow
• get
• have
• hear
• know
• learn
• notice
• observe
• perceive
• realize
• recognize
• study
• suffer
• think
• understand