phrasal verb · neutral
get the drift
/ɡet ðə drɪft/get the DRIFT
to understand the general meaning or gist of what someone is saying
Examples
“After ten minutes of explanation, I got the drift and agreed with the plan.”
“I didn't catch every detail, but I got the drift.”
“Can you repeat that more slowly? I didn't quite get the drift.”
Band 8 sentence
“I didn't follow every technical detail, but after the summary I quickly got the drift and could discuss solutions.”
Collocations
- get the drift of
- get the drift from
Word family
Common mistakes
I get the drift of your idea.→I got the drift of your idea.
I get the drift from what you say.→I got the drift from what you said.
Say it for a higher band
5understand the main idea→6get the gist→7+get the drift
Synonyms
get the gist
Easily confused
get the gist
“I didn't read every paragraph, but I got the gist of the article.”
Related words
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