What is "continental drift"

Drift \Drift\, n. [From drive; akin to LG. & D. drift a driving, Icel. drift snowdrift, Dan. drift, impulse, drove, herd, pasture, common, G. trift pasturage, drove. See Drive.]

1. A driving; a violent movement.

   The dragon drew him [self] away with drift of his wings.
   --King Alisaunder (1332).

2. The act or motion of drifting; the force which impels or drives; an overpowering influence or impulse.

   A bad man, being under the drift of any passion, will follow the impulse of it till something interpose.
   --South.

3. Course or direction along which anything is driven; setting. ``Our drift was south.''
   --Hakluyt.

4. The tendency of an act, argument, course of conduct, or the like; object aimed at or intended; intention; hence, also, import or meaning of a sentence or discourse; aim.

   He has made the drift of the whole poem a compliment on his country in general. -- Addison.

   Now thou knowest my drift.
   --Sir W. Scott.

5. That which is driven, forced, or urged along; as:

   1. Anything driven at random. ``Some log . . . a useless drift.''
      --Dryden.

   2. A mass of matter which has been driven or forced onward together in a body, or thrown together in a heap, etc., esp. by wind or water; as, a drift of snow, of ice, of sand, and the like.

      Drifts of rising dust involve the sky. -- Pope.

      We got the brig a good bed in the rushing drift [of ice].
      --Kane.

   3. A drove or flock, as of cattle, sheep, birds. [Obs.]

      Cattle coming over the bridge (with their great drift doing much damage to the high ways). -- Fuller.

6. (Arch.) The horizontal thrust or pressure of an arch or vault upon the abutments. [R.]
   --Knight.

7. (Geol.) A collection of loose earth and rocks, or boulders, which have been distributed over large portions of the earth's surface, especially in latitudes north of forty degrees, by the agency of ice.

8. In South Africa, a ford in a river.

9. (Mech.) A slightly tapered tool of steel for enlarging or shaping a hole in metal, by being forced or driven into or through it; a broach.

10. (Mil.)

    1. A tool used in driving down compactly the composition contained in a rocket, or like firework.

    2. A deviation from the line of fire, peculiar to oblong projectiles.

11. (Mining) A passage driven or cut between shaft and shaft; a driftway; a small subterranean gallery; an adit or tunnel.

12. (Naut.)

    1. The distance through which a current flows in a given time.

    2. The angle which the line of a ship's motion makes with the meridian, in drifting.

    3. The distance to which a vessel is carried off from her desired course by the wind, currents, or other causes.

    4. The place in a deep-waisted vessel where the sheer is raised and the rail is cut off, and usually terminated with a scroll, or driftpiece.

    5. The distance between the two blocks of a tackle.

13. The difference between the size of a bolt and the hole into which it is driven, or between the circumference of a hoop and that of the mast on which it is to be driven.

14. (Phys. Geog.) One of the slower movements of oceanic circulation; a general tendency of the water, subject to occasional or frequent diversion or reversal by the wind; as, the easterly drift of the North Pacific.

15. (A["e]ronautics) The horizontal component of the pressure of the air on the sustaining surfaces of a flying machine. The lift is the corresponding vertical component, which sustains the machine in the air.

    Note: Drift is used also either adjectively or as the first part of a compound. See Drift, a.

    Drift of the forest (O. Eng. Law), an examination or view of the cattle in a forest, in order to see whose they are, whether they are commonable, and to determine whether or not the forest is surcharged.
    --Burrill. [1913 Webster]

    continental drift (Geology), the very slow (ca. 1-5 cm per year) movement of the continents and parts of continents relative to each other and to the points of upwelling of magma in the viscous layers beneath the continents; -- causing, for example, the opening of the South Atlantic Ocean by the movement of Africa and South America away from each other. See also plate tectonics.

1925, a translation of German Kontinentalverschiebung, proposed 1912 by German scientist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930); the theory was not widely accepted until after c.1950.

n. (context geology English) The slow movement of continents explained by plate tectonics.

n. the gradual movement and formation of continents (as described by plate tectonics)

Continental drift is the movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other, thus appearing to "drift" across the ocean bed. The speculation that continents might have 'drifted' was first put forward by Abraham Ortelius in 1596. The concept was independently and more fully developed by Alfred Wegener in 1912, but his theory was rejected by some for lack of a mechanism (though this was supplied later by Arthur Holmes) and others because of prior theoretical commitments. The idea of continental drift has been subsumed by the theory of plate tectonics, which explains how the continents move.

In 1858 Antonio Snider-Pellegrini created two maps demonstrating how the American and African continents might have once fit together.

Continental Drift is a 1985 novel by Russell Banks. Set in the early 1980s, it follows two plots, through which Banks explores the relationship between apparently distant people drawn together in the world under globalization, which Banks compares to the geologic phenomena of continental drift. The first plot features Bob DuBois, a working class New Englander who heads to Florida in the hopes of striking it rich; the second plot traces the journey of Vanise Dorsinville from Haiti to Florida. It is an avowedly political work, whose stated aim is to "destroy the world as it is." Despite its scope, it is according to critic Michiko Kakutani "somehow, acutely personal."

After publishing Continental Drift, Banks won the Dos Passos Prize for Literature.