to drift apart
17
3.7
- phrasal verb
- /drɪft əˈpɑrt/
:
distanciarse (de)
- Over the years, my childhood friends and I gradually drifted apart as we pursued our own lives.
- they gradually drifted apart
- began to drift apart
- they just drifted apart
People drift apart when it comes to those matters.
- People drift apart when it comes to those matters.
- And then eventually they just, you know, drift apart.
- Nothing happened, but we just really drifted apart.
- So he lost touch with the family and him and my mother drifted apart.
- Most relationships don't make it people drift apart.
- I agree with two, two real good friends of mine and it kind of slowly drifting apart.
Examples
-
After high school, some of us drifted apart and lost touch with one another.
-
Do you ever get the feeling that we're drifting apart?
-
People drift apart when it comes to those matters.
-
And as time goes on, our experiences would drift apart and we would no longer be the same person.
-
I know, but people can love and people can still drift apart.
-
After my mom died... my dad and I drifted apart.
-
Danny and Robert went to different high schools and drifted apart, though they remained friends.
Blog text (21) -
Margo and I sort of... drifted apart.
-
Even so, as the incarceration stretched into years, we drifted apart.
Fiction book (1996) -
We went off to two different small-town colleges and drifted apart, but kept in constant touch by phone and email.
Fiction book (1998)
Synonyms
481
2.9
To move apart or stop being together
86
3.5
To move away from people or a place to create space
15
4.5
To slowly lose contact and closeness with someone
3
6.7
To stop being involved with a person, group, or idea
Antonyms
How Close
75
2.1
17
3.7
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to gradually become less close' is directly derivable from combining 'drift' (to move slowly) with 'apart' (separated); the metaphor of slow physical separation maps transparently onto social distance. This verb+particle composition is common in English and in many languages, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would likely infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Drift apart comes from the picture of two small boats that slowly drift apart on calm water when nobody steers them. Little by little the boats move away from each other, so drift apart now means 'to become less close' or 'lose contact' over time.