From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishcontinental driftˌcontinental ˈdrift noun [uncountable] HEGthe very slow movement of the continents across the Earth’s surface
Examples from the Corpus
continental drift• He waxed vehement about dinosaurs and extinction, about continental drift and the good old Galapagos finch.• Plate tectonics is not the same as continental drift.• So long as no viable cause for continental drift could be demonstrated, however, belief in it remained an act of faith.• We learn, too, that the great geophysicist, Sir Harold Jeffreys, refused to accept the evidence for continental drift.• An earth science example is the publication of Wegener's theory of continental drift in 1912.• Once viewed as a relic, continental drift and seafloor spreading evolved into the modern concept of plate tectonics. 