noun
definition
A modifier key whose main function is shifting between two or more functions of any of certain other keys (usually by pressing Shift and the other button simultaneously).
noun
definition
A type of women's undergarment, a slip.
example
Just last week she bought a new shift at the market.
definition
A change of workers, now specifically a set group of workers or period of working time.
example
We'll work three shifts a day till the job's done.
definition
An act of shifting; a slight movement or change.
example
There was a shift in the political atmosphere.
definition
The gear mechanism in a motor vehicle.
example
Does it come with a stick-shift?
definition
A bit shift.
definition
The infield shift.
example
Teams often use the shift against this lefty.
definition
(often with the definite article, usually uncountable) The act of kissing passionately.
definition
A contrivance, a device to try when other methods fail.
definition
A trick, an artifice.
definition
The extent, or arrangement, of the overlapping of plank, brick, stones, etc., that are placed in courses so as to break joints.
definition
A breaking off and dislocation of a seam; a fault.
definition
A mutation in which the DNA or RNA from two different sources (such as viruses or bacteria) combine.
definition
In violin-playing, any position of the left hand except that nearest the nut.
verb
definition
(sometimes figurative) To move from one place to another; to redistribute.
example
We'll have to shift these boxes to the downtown office.
definition
To change in form or character; swap.
definition
To change position.
example
His political stance shifted daily.
definition
To change residence; to leave and live elsewhere.
example
We are shifting to America next month.
synonyms
definition
To change (clothes, especially underwear).
definition
To change (someone's) clothes; sometimes specifically, to change underwear.
definition
To change gears (in a car).
example
I crested the hill and shifted into fifth.
definition
(typewriters) To move the keys of a typewriter over in order to type capital letters and special characters.
definition
(computer keyboards) To switch to a character entry mode for capital letters and special characters.
definition
To manipulate a binary number by moving all of its digits left or right; compare rotate.
example
Shifting 1001 to the left yields 10010; shifting it right yields 100.
definition
To remove the first value from an array.
definition
To dispose of.
example
How can I shift a grass stain?
definition
To hurry.
example
If you shift, you might make the 2:19.
definition
To engage in sexual petting.
definition
To resort to expedients for accomplishing a purpose; to contrive; to manage.
definition
To practice indirect or evasive methods.
definition
In violin-playing, to move the left hand from its original position next to the nut.
Examples of shifts in a Sentence
All these are profound shifts in public opinion.
A furnace is served by three men, working in eight-hour shifts, and requires about 2 tons of coal, which corresponds to about 110 gallons reduced oil, air being used as atomizer.
The centre of interest now shifts to the India House and to the British parliament.
The short screw whose divided milled head is shifts the zero of the micrometer by pushing, without turning, the short sliding rod whose flat end forms the point d'appui of the micrometer screw at I.
The scene of the legend now shifts to Rome, where Diocletian falls in love with a lovely nun named Ripsime; she, rather than gratify his passion, flees with her abbess Gaiana and several priests to Armenia.
To solve this difficulty many of the ancient Fathers and the modern critics have been put to miserable shifts.
To replace the ore-skip expeditiously by the man-car when the shifts are to be changed a crane is often erected over the shaft mouth.
There are generally two shifts of workmen, each shift working six hours, and the work is carried on continuously from Monday morning until Friday morning.
In his fight with poverty he was put to strange shifts, becoming cellarman at a tavern and clerk to a lawyer, reciting and singing at a small theatre, and compiling a collection of common songs.
The modern nakshatras are twenty-seven equal ecliptical divisions, the origin of which shifts, like that of the solar signs, with the vernal equinox.
Schuster suggested that the proximity of molecules vibrating in the same period might be the cause of the diminished frequency, and suggested that according to this view the shifts would be similar if the increase of density were produced by the presence of molecules of a different kind from those whose lines are being examined.
Close to and on either side of the absorptive band µ 2 has large positive and negative values, and if the above expression remains correct the change of frequency would, close to the centre of absorption, be 2 k-2"+3, which for n =3 and k= Io is 1/2000, or 500 times greater than the observed shifts, but this represents now the maximum displacement and not the displacement of the most intense portion of the radiation.
After the failure of this attempt he was put to the most pitiful shifts to make a living.
As these ships must often, against a contrary wind, have had to row both day and night, it seems reasonable to imagine the crew divided into three shifts (as they call them in mining districts), which would give double the number of men available to fight on any occasion as to row.'
Propositions concerning the possible existence of individuals put Leibnitz to some shifts, and the difficulty accounts for the close connexion established in regard to our actual world between the law of sufficient reason and the doctrine of the final cause.
When Su = o, (I + 2wu) () (1 + zwu) -1 is an operator which shifts (without further change) the tri - quaternion operand an amount given by u in direction and distance.
It is evident, in the first place, that in any displacement common to the two surfaces, the work of the two equal and opposite normal pressures will cancel; moreover if, one of the surfaces being fixed, an infinitely small displacement shifts the point of contact from A to B, and if A be the new position of that point of the sliding body which was at A, the pro jectior of AA on the normal at A is of the second order.
His Art of Travel; or, Shifts and Contrivances in Wild Countries was first published in 1855.
It will be seen that the maximum ordinates lie upon the curve A9 = constant dotted in the figure, and so, as the temperature of the ideal body rises, the wave-length of most intense radiation shifts from the infra-red X towards the luminous part of the spectrum.
In 1862 he was called on by Lord Monck, the governor-general, to form a ministry, which by manifold shifts held office till February 1864.
From the very first his reign was a time of war, foreign and domestic, of murmuring, and of humiliating b ill shifts and devices.
The savings all expended and Sully fallen into disgrace, she lost her influence and became the almost unconscious instrument of an ambitious man of low birth, the Florentine Concini, who was to drag her down with him in his fall; petty shifts became thenceforward the order of the day.
A man of action and not of cunning shifts, he succumbed on the 10th of July to the blows of his own government, which had passed from his hands into those of Robespierre, his ambitious and crafty rival.
The last section of this tube retains its connexion with the ventral portion of the somite, and so acquires an external opening, which is at first lateral, but soon shifts to the middle line, and fuses with its fellow, to form the single generative opening.
The electromotive force so selected is balanced against the steady potential difference produced between a fixed and a sliding contact on a wire traversed by another steady current, and if there is any difference between this last, the potential difference, and the instantaneous potential difference balanced against it, a relay is operated and sets in action a motor which shifts the contact point along the potentiometer wire and so restores the balance.
If he doesn't drive her as crazy as he does me, divvy up shifts with him, he said.
The nurses held the torches over the patient's abdomen in shifts to prevent their arms becoming stiff.
The crews are mostly two people, and mostly amateur rowers, who alternate between two hour shifts of rowing.
There is no clear evidence of corresponding shifts in tool function or the faunal assemblages.
The Reformation produced little bloodshed in London, with most higher class members co-operating to bring about gradual shifts to Protestantism.
These shifts provide us, it would seem, with five types of boasting defined by the object Paul boasts about.
All shifts in the situation whether to the right or the left are of mortal danger to them.
Any such shifts in funding have to be match funded from the national exchequer.
We are looking for qualified instructors on a variety of shifts.
Despite these strong isotope shifts, we found a largely uniform isotope fractionation.
For the American multi-national corporations and the elites control- ling them, these policy shifts were good news.
George mentioned that the problem is trained manpower, it is not possible to mount two shifts.
I had menial, low-paid jobs and despite working a 35-40 hour week including night shifts, was getting into debt.
The sixth age shifts and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Global shifts in transcription pattern due to binding of alternative sigma factors to the core polymerase.
Once the horizontal shafts were established, they were worked 24 hours a day with three, eight-hour shifts.
Changes are non-linear - systems change through phase shifts - radical transformations of kind rather than incremental development.
Must have basic telephonist and keyboard skills + be able to work early and late shifts including weekends as and when required.
You are my protector who keeps me safe, inside, From the sand which shifts beneath my feet with every ebbing tide.
Were her shifts between opposing viewpoints intriguing or merely bewildering?
But it is obvious to every one who nowadays indulges in the profitless pastime of studying their writings that, as a whole, they failed in grasping the essential difference between homology (or " affinity," as they generally termed it) and analogy - though this difference had been fully understood and set forth by Aristotle himself - and, moreover, that in seeking for analogies on which to base their foregone conclusions they were often put to hard shifts.
They are preceded by a rapid fall of the barometer for about a day, until a gradient from south to north is formed, then the wind commences to blow, at first gently, from the south-east; rapidly increasing in violence, it shifts through south to south-west, finally dropping about sunset.
Moreover the Forcados bar shifts little laterally, and within the bar is a natural harbour with an area of 3 to 4 sq.
The young writer, as Stevenson has said, instinctively tries to copy whatever seems most admirable, and he shifts his admiration with astonishing versatility.
He shifts the Dukes about as I might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan estates.