The Hamlet Project

It is surprising to me that getting one’s drift is as old an idiom as this. There’s a way that “if you get my drift” can still sound very of the moment. According to Etymology on-line this sense of drift (i.e.: What ONE is getting at, alluding to, suggesting) is as old as the 1520s. Does it qualify as an idiom?
I mean, if it’s been this long, does drift just mean “meaning” or “intention” at a certain point, with centuries behind it?
It must come from the sense of things drifting towards or away on water or floating in the air…but now? Is it just it’s own definition?