Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Windblown sea spray.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Nautical, the spray of salt water blown along the surface of the sea in heavy winds.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as spoondrift.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun sea spray blown from the tops of waves by the wind
  • noun snow blown by the wind at sea

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun spray blown up from the surface of the sea

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Variant of Scots spenedrift : spene (variant of obsolete spoon, to run before the wind) + drift.]

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Examples

  • This "spindrift" (6) cuts to the marrow with its chilling mist, its clarifying ambiguity.

    A Motley Vision 2010

  • My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain.

    CHAPTER XII 2010

  • The air was filled with spindrift like a fog or spray.

    CHAPTER XXX 2010

  • Finally, acknowledge that you're going to miss things, because your head is going to wind up very cluttered with spindrift and nonsense and other things that didn't make the page.

    seanan_mcguire: Thoughts on Writing #30: Continuity Trapper Keeper. seanan_mcguire 2009

  • In the spindrift orb to grow or char strange wings.

    Upwards, Into the White Eye Rising 2009

  • And the first detailed drops splashing at the bottom of the goblet with a scatter of spindrift, each fleck embellished with the finicky rigor of some precisionist painting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • And the first detailed drops splashing at the bottom of the goblet with a scatter of spindrift, each fleck embellished with the finicky rigor of some precisionist painting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • And the first detailed drops splashing at the bottom of the goblet with a scatter of spindrift, each fleck embellished with the finicky rigor of some precisionist painting.

    Underworld Don Delillo 2008

  • He does control a lot of things, but so much of it takes time to enact that really, for much of his job, he is helpless in the spindrift of what the previous administration did.

    Miscellaneous F: 10/10/2006 chitin 2006

  • Each boxcar had an identical little vortex of spindrift coming off the trailing edge of the roof – really pretty under the slate gray dawn.

    Geminids 2007

Comments

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  • At Kittyhawk the brothers Wright

    Imagined a man in a kite

    And welcomed the spindrift

    Portending the wind lift

    The day of the very first flight.

    March 8, 2018