Part 327

4. To practice indirect or evasive methods.

All those schoolmen, though they were exceeding witty, yet better teach all their followers to shift, than to resolve by their distinctions.

Sir W. Raleigh.

5. (Naut.) To slip to one side of a ship, so as to destroy the equilibrum; -- said of ballast or cargo; as, the cargo shifted.

Shift (?), n. [Cf. Icel skipti. See Shift, v. t.] 1. The act of shifting. Specifically: (a) The act of putting one thing in the place of another, or of changing the place of a thing; change; substitution.

My going to Oxford was not merely for shift of air.

Sir H. Wotton.

(b) A turning from one thing to another; hence, an expedient tried in difficulty; often, an evasion; a trick; a fraud. "Reduced to pitiable shifts." Macaulay.

I 'll find a thousand shifts to get away.

Shak.

Little souls on little shifts rely.

Dryden.

2. Something frequently shifted; especially, a woman's under-garment; a chemise.

3. The change of one set of workmen for another; hence, a spell, or turn, of work; also, a set of workmen who work in turn with other sets; as, a night shift.

4. In building, the extent, or arrangement, of the overlapping of plank, brick, stones, etc., that are placed in courses so as to break joints.

5. (Mining) A breaking off and dislocation of a seam; a fault.

6. (Mus.) A change of the position of the hand on the finger board, in playing the violin.

To make shift, to contrive or manage in an exigency. "I shall make shift to go without him." Shak.

made a shift to keep their own in Ireland.

Milton.

Shift"a*ble (?), a. Admitting of being shifted.

Shift"er (?), n. 1. One who, or that which, shifts; one who plays tricks or practices artifice; a cozener.

'T was such a shifter that, if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down.

Milton.

2. (Naut.) An assistant to the ship's cook in washing, steeping, and shifting the salt provisions.

3. (Mach.) (a) An arrangement for shifting a belt sidewise from one pulley to another. (b) (Knitting Mach.) A wire for changing a loop from one needle to another, as in narrowing, etc.

Shift"i*ness, n. The quality or state of being shifty.

Diplomatic shiftiness and political versatility.