about
Words don't mean what they used to.
Drift is a free daily word history game. Every day, a familiar modern word appears — and your job is to figure out what it meant centuries ago.
“Silly” once meant blessed. “Gossip” once meant godparent. “Nice” once meant foolish. Language is always moving — Drift is the record of where it has been.
Why Drift?
Rooted in real history
Every puzzle uses genuine historical sentences — adapted from real medieval chronicles, church records, court documents, and literature. The context is authentic.
Letter-matching guesses
You don't choose from a list. You type a real word, and the letter-by-letter feedback guides you closer — a mechanic that feels familiar but serves an unfamiliar purpose.
Learning after every puzzle
Win or lose, you see the full etymology: where the word came from, how its meaning shifted, and a fact that makes it stick. The game ends; the knowledge stays.
One word a day
A single daily puzzle that everyone plays together. Simple, repeatable, and worth coming back for.
The idea behind it
The phenomenon has a name: semantic drift. It's the process by which words slowly shift, soften, narrow, or broaden in meaning across generations. The word you use naturally every day once carried completely different freight.
Drift was built to make that invisible history visible — one word at a time, one day at a time, in a format that makes the discovery feel earned rather than read.
Explore
Feedback, suggestions, or spotted a historical error? hello@driftgame.com