adrifts, something of; tonality
and turned him adrift. Something of ₁
tonality (others called it a cutting
adrift). Something of the same kind ₂
a being driven; a heap,
of matter ₃
sources :
- Then, when Mr. Gordon looked curiously at him, he hastened to explain how Ball & Biggers had run out of work and turned him adrift. Something of his eagerness for making and saving college funds showed as he further explained his desire to get other work quickly.
ex James William Jackson, “The Other Man’s Interests,” taken from Young People and found in The Canadian (“Published to Teach Printing to Some Pupils of the Ontario School for the Deaf, Belleville”) 37:8 (Belleville, January 15, 1930) : 1, 8
archive.org : link - Especially when heady new means become available, composers need to systematize ways of dealing with them. Arnold Schoenberg’s invention of the twelve-tone system, indeed, had been a “systematic” response to what some people called “the emancipation of dissonance” and of tonality (others called it a cutting adrift). Something of the same kind seems to have happened in the 1950s.
ex Joseph Kerman, with Vivian Kerman, Listen (Third edition, 1980) : 458
“not available for borrowing” at archive.org : link - drift (n.)
early 14c., literally “a being driven” (at first of snow, rain, etc.); not recorded in Old English, it is either a suffixed form of drive (v.)... or borrowed from Old Norse drift “snow drift,” or Middle Dutch drift “pasturage, drove, flock,” both from Proto-Germanic *driftiz ... from PIE root *dhreibh- “to drive, push”...
“A being driven,” hence “anything driven,” especially a number of things or a heap of matter driven or moving together (mid-15c.). Figurative sense of “aim, intention, what one is getting at" (on the notion of “course, tendency”) is from 1520s.ex etymonline : link
aside :
following an exchange with ch re: “driven workers” — what? — driven vs. having nameable (thus mutable even suspect) motivations, influences... drive, an impelling force (or emptiness), a formless something, hidden within or behind oneself ... Spinoza’s conatus...
- IIIp6
Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.IIIp7
The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.ex the Ethics, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, edited and translated by Edwin Curley (1985; 2016)
via archive.org : link
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