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Shift   /ʃɪft/   Listen
Shift

verb
(past & past part. shifted; pres. part. shifting)
1.
Make a shift in or exchange of.  Synonyms: change over, switch.
2.
Change place or direction.  Synonyms: dislodge, reposition.
3.
Move around.  Synonym: transfer.
4.
Move very slightly.  Synonyms: agitate, budge, stir.
5.
Move from one setting or context to another.  "Shift one's attention"
6.
Change in quality.
7.
Move and exchange for another.
8.
Move sideways or in an unsteady way.  Synonyms: careen, tilt, wobble.
9.
Move abruptly.  Synonyms: lurch, pitch.
10.
Use a shift key on a keyboard.
11.
Change phonetically as part of a systematic historical change.
12.
Change gears.
13.
Lay aside, abandon, or leave for another.  Synonyms: change, switch.  "She switched psychiatrists" , "The car changed lanes"



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"Shift" Quotes from Famous Books



... the white phantom in the starlight, and could not tell where it went when it vanished behind the chestnut trees on the hill, till one man, braver than the rest, hid himself behind these trees and discovered the mystery. The sprite was Marie, in her little shift, who stepped out of the window of the loft where she slept on to a bough of the tree, and thence to the hill, for the house was built so close against the bank that it was 'but a step from garret to garden,' ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... third person in the house would be extremely awkward just now, and, being already dressed, he opened the window and informed her that they could manage to shift for themselves that morning. She had a milk-can in her hand, which he told her to leave at the door. When the dame had gone away he searched in the back quarters of the house for fuel, and speedily lit a fire. There was plenty of eggs, butter, bread, and so on in the larder, and Clare soon had ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... Here, by an insensible shift in the meaning of the word "idea", a momentous revolution had taken place in psychology. Ideas had originally meant objective terms distinguished in thought-images, qualities, concepts, propositions. But now ideas began to mean living thoughts, moments or states of consciousness. They ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... piece of equipment, but it is the highest: The Canadian, if he is to live a life thoroughly scaled on the scale of the reasonable, must place the greatest importance on those interests which transcend all his others, his future fare beyond this make-shift existence; his relations to the unseen world; and how to lay hold on purity and righteousness. Think what he may of them, life should at any rate think. Let him set apart times to ponder over these ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... the returning pigeon, when he heard the burr of Winn's engine and saw the huge monoplane, with all surfaces set, drop down upon him, stop suddenly on an air-cushion manufactured on the spur of the moment by a shift of the horizontal rudders, glide a few yards, strike ground, and come to rest not a score of feet away from him. But when he saw a young man, calmly sitting in the machine and leveling a pistol at him, the man turned to run. Before he could make the corner of the cabin, a bullet through the leg ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London

... protected from the sun or cold. Examples of such birds are the Quail, Grouse, Sandpipers, Plovers, and Ducks. The young of these and allied species are {44} able from the beginning to pick up their food, and they quickly learn from the example of their parents what is desirable. Soon they are able to shift for themselves, although one or both of the parents continue to attend them ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson

... time when the war council rose after completing its plans, a sudden shift of the wind blew the poison gas out to sea, just when it appeared certain that it would reach the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... in the "danger buildings" for ten and a half hours in a shift, making and inserting the detonating fuses, where a slip may result in their own death and that of their comrades. Working with T.N.T. they turn yellow—hands and face and hair—and risk poisoning. They are called the "canary girls," and if you ask why ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser

... feeling of cold and abject soul-nausea he shut the book, put it away on a bookshelf in which he saw a gap, and went to turn out the lamp. As the flame flickered and died out he heard Jimmy's foot shift on ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... attempt any trespass. For my part, I shall withhold from neither the Congress nor the people any fact or report, past, present, or future, which is necessary for an informed judgment of our conduct and hazards. I shall neither shift the burden of executive decisions to the Congress, nor avoid responsibility for the outcome ...
— State of the Union Addresses of John F. Kennedy • John F. Kennedy

... others, and glittered through the waves while it was yet several fathoms away: the pale green seemed as if mingled with broken sheets of snow, that—flickering amid the mass of light—appeared, with every tug given by the fishermen, to shift, dissipate, and again form; and there streamed from it into the surrounding gloom myriads of green rays, an instant seen and then lost—the retreating fish that had avoided the meshes, but had lingered, until disturbed, beside their entangled ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... occur when the stuff sank to a temperature of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But it chanced that, unknown to Cavor, dissension had arisen about the furnace tending. Gibbs, who had previously seen to this, had suddenly attempted to shift it to the man who had been a gardener, on the score that coal was soil, being dug, and therefore could not possibly fall within the province of a joiner; the man who had been a jobbing gardener alleged, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... spark of night life. There were no trains, no flocking crowds, but only occasional pedestrians and the accidental clatter of a horse-cab now and then. And the Danube rolled through the stillness silently. I fell in with a late-going working man coming off a day shift. He piloted me to the "Ritz," home of Allied Commissions and delegates of all kinds. That there should be a room there was unlikely enough, but it was possible to persuade the clerk to telephone to various obscure establishments on ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham

... Vicksburg storekeeper. This young woman, who had doubtless found ample opportunity for the practice of domestic economy in the paternal home, soon proved herself to be a most excellent housekeeper on her own account. She was a jewel indeed to her improvident husband, who, finding that she made shift by one means or another to keep the family larder supplied, whether he kept her purse supplied or not, dismissed a great care from his mind at once and for ever, and thenceforth to the end of his days never exerted himself beyond his natural bent. As the daughter, Dora Hanchett, grew to womanhood, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various

... Darrell continued to watch the proceedings, and in a few moments began to grow interested, not so much in the examination as in the conduct of the prisoner. The latter evidently had found the face for which he was looking, for his eyes seemed glued to a certain spot. Occasionally he would shift them for a moment, but invariably, with each new interrogatory, they would turn to that particular spot, as the needle to the pole, not through any volition of his own, but drawn by some influence against ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... cheek of the crevasse, lapping the hard ice by several feet. Then the cables were held taut, and securely fastened to the belaying-pin. The nearer end of the pole was tied with other ropes—so that it could not possibly shift from its place—and the yawning abyss was now ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid

... cut at Wai-pi'o; Ha'l takes the bamboo Ko-a'e-kea; [Page 55] 35 Deftly wields the knife of small-leafed bamboo; A bamboo choice and fit for the work. Cut, cut through, cut off the corners; Cut round, like crescent moon of Hoaka; Cut in scallops this shift that makes tabu: 40 A fringe ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson

... related, "had passed the Forth, had been joined by the army in the South, were masters of Newcastle, and carried all before them; and their friends in and about London had taken arms in such numbers, that King George had made a shift to retire." These falsehoods were printed by Freebairn, formerly the King's printer at Edinburgh, whom the Earl had established at Perth, and provided with the implements brought ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... to doo with the ship as yet. We have got moast of our cargo out; it is all dammaged but the beef and pork, which is in good order. I have lost a great dele of my cloaths, and I am thinking of drawing of about six pound, wich I think I can make shift with. If this axident had not hapned I shold not have had aney call for aney. As for my stores, there is a great part of them thrown overboard; likewise all the officers stores in the ship is gone the same way, for evry thing that came to hand was thrown ovarboard to lighten the ship. I ...
— "The Gallant, Good Riou", and Jack Renton - 1901 • Louis Becke

... Sewell made what shift he could to grasp these practical ideas, and he obediently ate of whatever his wife bade him. She would not let him hurry his breakfast in the least, and when he had at last finished, she said, "Now you can go, David. ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... couple in our village who are past work. The married daughter has made shift to take her mother and the parish half-crown, but there is neither room nor food for the father, and he must go to N-. If husband and wife went together, they would be separated at the workhouse door. The parting had to come; it came yesterday. I saw them stumbling lamely down the road ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless

... to the homeward trail with backward glances and something of regret lest the archaean foundations of that mountain of ore might shift over night. There was no sense of fatigue now. Birch skipped over logs in wayward abandon and laughed like a schoolboy when Clark picked a heavy gold watch chain that dangled from an overhanging bush. Riggs' thin legs were being scratched by the sharp samples with which he had ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan

... "we watch the Germans, or at least the aeroplanes do—we can't see them. They work on their defenses. They pull up new guns and shift their emplacements. We let them work. Then our big guns ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich

... grass-grown and tree-shaded, along which, hardly oftener than once a week, a leisurely barge—towed by an equally leisurely mule, with its fellow there on deck taking his rest, preparatory to his next eight-mile "shift"—sleepily dreams its way, presumably on some errand and to some destination, yet indeed hinting of no purpose or object other than its loitering passage through a summer afternoon. I have even heard ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... her to exercise that right. He felt himself the superior of the rest of his fellow-beings, but her inferior; did she not successfully defy him; could she not, without a word, by simply resting her calm gaze upon him, make him shift and slink? ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... the meetest place to lay them in is where they may haue most ayre, so they may lye dry (for wet they can by no meanes indure,) also they must not lye close, because the smell of them is both strong & vnwholsome: the beds whereon they must lye must be of sweet straw, and you must both turne them and shift them very often, or else they will rot speedily: for the transporting or carying them any long iourney, you must vse them in all things as you vse your Peares, & the carriage will ...
— The English Husbandman • Gervase Markham

... doubt, for Lower Egypt, but a calamity for us, for during the night the river rose 2 feet, and overflowed its low, level banks. The water overran part of the camping ground, compelling many a drenched soldier to shift his quarters hurriedly. We got through the dark and troublous night somehow, though keenly vexed by the muttered discontent of the camels, and the persistent, blatant, variegated amorous braying of 500 donkeys. A cat upon the tiles, a Romeo, was ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... was a certain rambling propensity with which, like the sons of Ishmael, they seem to have been gifted by Heaven, and which continually goads them on to shift their residence from place to place, so that a Yankee farmer is in a constant state of migration, tarrying occasionally here and there, clearing lands for other people to enjoy, building houses for others to inhabit, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... be surprised that his indignation knew no bounds. The love he had borne for his daughter only increased his anger. He broke out against "her wickedness," and swore "that he would turn her out of his house, as a strumpet, to shift for herself." Ormonde and Southampton strove to moderate his rage by telling him that they believed his daughter to be already married ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... shift the scene and the date pretty frequently in this tale. We solicit the reader's attendance at an office ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... enough the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head wagging humorously as he watched the experiment. It was getting toward the time of year when she would mate again, and send them off into the world to shift for themselves. And this was perhaps ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... agitation of the waters. The pulse of the earth is in them. The pulse of the sun and the moon is in them. They are more cosmic than terrestrial. The earth wears her seas like a loose garment which the sun and moon constantly pluck at and shift from side to side. Only the ocean feels the tidal impulse, the heavenly influences. The great inland bodies of water are unresponsive to them—they are too small for the meshes of the solar and lunar net. Is it not equally true that only great souls are moved by the great fundamental ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... new basket shift. Also, the carriage on this machine is perfectly stationary and rigid. On all other machines it is fastened by a series of connecting bolts and links, which you will readily understand makes perfect alignment uncertain. Then our tabulator is a part and parcel of the instrument, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... and let her in and, hearing the case was grave, soon prepared to start. And while he dressed, Millicent made shift to dry herself by the heat of a dying fire. Then he put his horse in the trap and very quick they drove away up to the gamekeeper's house. But no word of her amazing adventure did the woman let drop in doctor's ear; and the strange thing was that peace had come upon her now and fear ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... world as in the school I'd say how fate may change and shift, The prize be sometimes to the fool, The race not always to the swift: The strong may yield, the good may fall, The great man be a vulgar clown, The knave be lifted over all, The kind ...
— Christmas - Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse • Various

... insistence of Seward[748], but he attached no importance to this, regarding it as at best a measure of pretence intended to frighten the South and to influence foreign governments[749]. Russell was not impressed with Stuart's shift from mediation to recognition. "I think," he wrote, "we must allow the President to spend his second batch of 600,000 men before we can hope that he and his democracy will listen to reason[750]." But this did not imply that Russell was wavering in the idea that October would ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams

... and exceeding him two inches in height, but far beneath him in an equal proportion of body; for he was not onely what the Latines call compernis, knocking his knees together, and going out squalling with his feet, but also haulted a little; yet made a shift to dance in an antimask at court, where he drew little Jeffrey, the dwarf, out of his pocket, first to the wonder, then to the laughter, of the beholders. He dyed Anno Dom. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... men; these they ordered with iron tools to dig a way through the rocks. This they performed with the greatest speed imaginable; and through this way, by the help of many ropes and pulleys, they at last made shift to get up two pieces of ordnance, wherewith they made a battery next day, to play on the fort. Meanwhile, the French knowing these designs, prepared for a defence (while the Spaniards were busy about the battery) sending notice ...
— The Pirates of Panama • A. O. (Alexandre Olivier) Exquemelin

... I've filled my contract, wrought in thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt thou judge me, but by the work of my hands. Master, I've done thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long shift ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger

... believing it, for, liars and prevaricators as were the other men about him, Israel had never yet deceived him, Ben Aboo made what poor shift he could to cover his shame at the sorry weakness he had just betrayed. And first he gazed in a sort of stupor into Israel's steadfast face; and then he dropped his evil eyes, and laughed in scorn of his own words, as if trying to carry them off by a silly show of braggadocio, and to make ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... which cannot plausibly be eluded. For I do not believe that any of the more curious will find fault with me for fastning the origine, and alliance of the Language upon the same bottome with the begining and first society of mankind, who are observed never to shift their Country, without having their Language to bear their Arms and Customes company. As I never thought fit to dispute it with the Learned, why they did not make use of the affinity of the Languages, which sometimes are of clearer notice to ...
— A Philosophicall Essay for the Reunion of the Languages - Or, The Art of Knowing All by the Mastery of One • Pierre Besnier

... of shipmaster," exclaimed the indignant Captain Bowers. "First you throw away your ship, and then you let your passengers shift for themselves." ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... parts, the weather being very hazy, the seamen spied a rock within half a cable's length of the ship;[7] but the wind was so strong, that we were driven directly upon it, and immediately split. Six of the crew, of whom I was one, having let down the boat into the sea, made a shift to get clear of the ship and the rock. We rowed, by my computation, about three leagues, till we were able to work no longer, being already spent with labor, while we were in the ship. We, therefore, trusted ourselves to the mercy ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift

... stiff, and so drove us along that we turned over two broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed the watery prairie. By night it was a reef-topsail-breeze; but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-topgallant-sail, though the light mast sprung like ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... spell, and there was a general murmur, while every individual present seemed to shift his position in his anxiety to obtain a better view of what ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... peach of an idea," declared Cub, jumping to his feet in his eagerness. "I've got two hundred and fifty feet of extra wire and some insulators on the boat and we can put up an aerial here without taking down the one on the Catwhisker. Then we can shift the radio outfit back and forth to the island and to the boat as ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield

... but now it is his will to make things sore dark. Somehow I can't trust and I can't hope, for there's nothing to hope for, and there are the children, four of 'em unable to earn their bread. Harry must make shift to do something, but there are three little ones. Oh, good Lord, don't ever let me hear the ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade

... be great oscillation in the emotional interest, and the hot places may shift before one almost as rapidly as the sparks that run through burnt-up paper. Then we have the wavering and divided self we heard so much of in the previous lecture. Or the focus of excitement and heat, ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... calves, or to goats (in this case it is the loftier portion). On each alp there are several sets of huts wherein live the cow-herds and cheese-makers (the latter are called Sennen or Fruitiers), the cattle being generally left in the open. The cattle, with their attendants, shift from one to the other of these sets of huts, between the end of June and the end of September, making but one sojourn at the highest huts, but two at the lower. The proper name for these nuts is Sennhutten or chalets, but the latter ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... very strong against Doctor West. Everybody believes him guilty. Do you think you can suddenly, within twenty-four hours, reverse the whole situation, and not run some risk of having suspicion shift around to you?" ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... pounds, since my last debts were paid off—thanks to Mrs. Ralph, who is the most managing woman in the world. By-the-bye, when you see her, don't seem surprised at her being older than I am. Oh! this is the address, is it? Hollyoake Square? Where the devil's that! Never mind, I'll take a cab, and shift the responsibility of finding the place on the driver. Keep up your spirits, and wait here till I come back. You shall have such news of Mr. Shopkeeper and his daughter as you little expect! Au revoir, my ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... the water felt when he thought of her tender skin. And her pretty dress, that she had set such store by, in which she had intended to go to church with him on Sunday—utterly destroyed, of course! Well, he must make shift to afford her another and smarter one, and get it made quickly. She should have her pick and choice. As the following wave soused his uprising head, slapping him full in the face, so as to confuse and blind him for a second or two, the fear that she might get "a dose of it" ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... add to the uncertainties of navigation, the inhabitants along the eastern bank of the stream frequently dig new canals for irrigation purposes, which both reduces the water of the river and tends to make it shift its channel. Above Bagdad there are no steamers on the Tigris, but sailing vessels of 30 tons and more navigate the river to Samarra and beyond. The characteristic craft for local service in the immediate environment of Bagdad is the kufa, a circular boat of basket-work covered with bitumen, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... thousand and one chances for contracting disease of the anus and rectum do not cease with the period of infancy. The child is left pretty much to shift for itself as to regularity of eating and the evacuation of the contents of its bowels, wherein disease has already obtained a foothold. All kinds of foodstuffs, at all hours, with seeds, stones, etc., are poked into its stomach, ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... son? Truly it is a goodly suit. My coffer is so low that I know not how I shall make shift to ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... sudden wild inclination to use his own arms and legs in a way he had never before known or dreamed of, yet that seemed curiously familiar. The balance and adjustment of his physical frame sought to shift and alter; neck and shoulders, as it were, urged forward; there came a singular pricking in the loins, a rising of the back, a thrusting up and outwards of the chest. He felt that something grew ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood

... amiable weakness, no individual among his parishioners chose to make the black veil a subject of friendly remonstrance. There was a feeling of dread, neither plainly confessed nor carefully concealed, which caused each to shift the responsibility upon another, till at length it was found expedient to send a deputation of the church, in order to deal with Mr. Hooper about the mystery before it should grow into a scandal. Never did an embassy so ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the Secret Service agent warmly. "I have risked my life daily for the Kaiser and the Fatherland in a hostile country. There have been hours which I do not care to remember." The speaker's tone grew husky. "Some day—a short shift; and I ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... a dream, yes. [Listening.] And hark, down by the river, dear! The factories are working! My factories! All those that I would have created! Listen! Do you hear them humming? The night shift is on—so they are working night and day. Hark! hark! the wheels are whirling and the bands are flashing—round and round and round. ...
— John Gabriel Borkman • Henrik Ibsen

... breast, beg him, in that small, wheedling voice which he so loved, to ask her mother that she might go or have; for well she knew, being astute, though so small and innocent and gentle, that such a measure was calculated to serve her ends, and allay her mother's scruples through a shift of responsibility. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... made the most of it and got as far as might be into the mediaeval. I found my friar charmingly companionable. His Bavarian patois was not easy to follow, nor could he catch readily the speech I had been learning in the schools. But we made shift and had much talk as we drove through the storm into the highlands. He was a brother in the monastery at Salzburg, but being out of health, was making his way to a hospice of his order above the valley. He had heard of America, and knew there ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... earlier visit his knowledge of the holdup had made him an attractive center, so once again he saw the girls turn expectant eyes on him, Aunt Ellen forget her grapes, and even the strange man's glance shift from the wineglass and ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner

... Laetitia's attempt to shift with Miss Middleton's shiftiness was vain; for now she seemed really listening to the language of Jealousy:—jealous of the ancient Letty Dale—and immediately before the tone ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... rather timidly toward the bar. Okie, the proprietor, was on duty readying the place for the night shift. Toryl held up his hand. The crypterpreter had already informed him that oral conversation was the manner of communication on the strange planet. Such conversation had long ago been abandoned on ...
— Jubilation, U.S.A. • G. L. Vandenburg

... air, can one seize the sea, can one grasp the fire? Even so intangible to me the answer to my desire. The elements we feel and see shift and drift and suspire And we therein behind the screen, with glimmering brains that tire. That is all! Nor can I fall now in the race. As a second breath to a runner comes my soul takes up the pace— For I dreamed the world ran with me in a far ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... degrees, the pulse is small, hard, and rapid (70 to 100), appetite is lost, rumination ceases, and the milk shrinks in quantity or is entirely arrested, and the breathing is hurried. The hind limbs may shift uneasily, the tail be twisted, the head and eyes turn to the right flank, and the teeth are ground. With the flush of heat to the horns and other extremities, there is redness of the eyes, nose, and mouth, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... irritated beyond measure by its lack, painfully cognizant of its value. But he was too diffident to suggest a credit on the strength of the cheque which, upon reflection, he decided was merely delayed in the more or less uncertain mails. He could make shift with what he had for another month. Nor did he mention ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, two, or three, or his great oath, BY QUATER, [25] His musics,[26] his trigon, his golden thigh, [27] Or his telling how elements [28] shift: but I Would ask, how of late thou hast suffered translation And shifted thy coat in these days ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis

... expression [95] of his thoughts, than any merely symbolical conceptions could possibly have been. They concentrate and express, less by way of definite conceptions than by the touches, the promptings of a piece of music, all those vague fancies, misgivings, presentiments, which shift and mix and are defined and fade again, whenever the thoughts try to fix themselves with sincerity on the conditions and surroundings of the disembodied spirit. I suppose no one would come to the sacristy of San Lorenzo for consolation; for seriousness, for solemnity, for dignity of impression, ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... Street closes at one A. M. Between twelve-thirty and closing time it is full of busy eaters, mostly the night shift from the Chestnut Street newspaper offices and printing and engraving firms in the neighbourhood. Ham and eggs blossom merrily. The white-coated waiters move in swift, stern circuit. Griddle cakes bake with amazing swiftness toward the stroke of one. Little dishes of baked beans ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley

... could not hunt again for at least a week, although I could sit a horse. We had seven sheep, and the group was assured; therefore, we decided to shift camp to the wapiti country, fifty miles away hoping that by the time we reached there, we both would be ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... for you than I have done; and I won't deny that I am a little concerned about all the children that I have brought into the world. But that can't be helped either; and I hope you will find a spot where an honest dandelion can shift for herself.'" ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... sufficiently strong to carry on your Government with ease, but that I could not answer for the event of a continuance of the war. He answered, that the situation of Ireland weighed very materially with him in his wishes for peace, and that, although he never wished to shift off responsibility, yet he trusted in your integrity and honour; that, if he found it necessary, he should be enabled to state that part of the subject from the best authority. To this I thought myself justified in answering, that most certainly you would never abandon a ground which ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... a shift to service industries after the country regained independence; the main environmental priorities are improvement of drinking water quality and sewage system, household, and hazardous waste management, as well as reduction of ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... be forced to stay out a sermon, he pulls his hat over his eyes, and frowns out the hour; and when he comes home, thinks to make amends for this fault by abusing the preacher. His main policy is to shift off the communion, for which he is never unfurnished of a quarrel, and will be sure to be out of charity at Easter; and indeed he lies not, for he has a quarrel to the sacrament. He would make a bad martyr and good traveller, for his conscience is ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... well-to-do town or village, and make them suddenly dependent upon their own efforts, and how many could compete in any one thing with those already engaged in supplying the market? And yet just such helpless young creatures are every day compelled to shift for themselves. If to these unfortunates the paths of honest industry seem hedged and thorny, not so those of sin. They are easy enough at first, if any little difficulty with conscience can be overcome; and the devil, and fallen humanity doing his ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... happy. A certain Banbury had been there for three years and had earned the nickname of "old Father Time," and Mansell, too, swore he would enrol himself with the Lost Legion, while even Gordon said that nothing would shift him from there for ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... books themselves have small say in the matter, for a certain room in the house is allotted to them without any consideration as to its suitability for storing books, and there they must abide, making such shift as their possessor shall determine. This must always be the case where their owner is in lodgings or in any temporary abode, where it is not considered worth while going to the expense of putting up permanent shelves for his books. But, after careless handling, there ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... a Greek by birth; my parents were poor people residing at Smyrna. I was an only son, and brought up to my father's profession,—that of a cooper. When I was twenty years old, I had buried both my parents, and was left to shift for myself. I had been for some time in the employ of a Jewish wine-merchant, and I continued there for three years after my father's death, when a circumstance occurred which led to my subsequent prosperity and ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... the rope was got, and doubt if I much cared. It was not that which gravelled me, but whether, now that we had it, it would serve our turn. Its length, indeed, we made a shift to fathom out; but who was to tell us how that length compared with the way we had to go? Day after day, there would be always some of us stolen out to the Devil's Elbow and making estimates of the descent, whether by a ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... neglect on the part of their mothers. Women who are busy all day and every evening with social engagements have little time to cultivate the friendship of their daughters. Hence the girl just coming out is left to shift for herself, and she soon discovers that a certain risque freedom in manner and conversation, and a disregard of convention, will win her a superficial popularity which she is apt to mistake ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... herr. Certainly he has no hands, but his feet are as true, or truer, than a man's. You will see he will get through. And I shall carry the basket; it is light now. You see I can shift it as I like,— ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... twenty-six years old and his upper lip was adorned with a few thinly scattered hairs, which he proudly termed a moustache. Otherwise he was unintelligent and ordinary looking, one of the many thousands of New York young men who, graduates of the slums, have been left to shift for themselves, and whose chief intellectual pastime has been standing on street corners reading baseball returns. Not only had he no education, but he was rather proud of the fact, affecting to despise bookish people as prigs and "high-brows." ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow

... the way the men who are in authority seek to evade their responsibility. They speak as though evil that was out of sight ceased to be evil. The very existence of that woman is a scandal and it does not help matters to shift it to another of the islands. In the end I had to speak ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... stop some of the infernal yelling with a few well-directed bullets, but they had to choke their rage, and watch events closely. During a temporary lull in hostilities, one of the trappers took occasion to crawl down to where the mules were, and shift them to the west side of the rock, where the wall was the highest; so that the flame and smoke might possibly pass by them without so much danger as where they were picketed before. He had just succeeded in doing this, and, tearing up the long grass for several yards around the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... themselves became the greatest barriers to any massive migrations, till in certain countries of Europe and Asia the historical movement has been reduced to a continual pressure, resulting in compression of population here, repression there. Hence, though political boundaries may shift, ethnic boundaries scarcely budge. The greatest wars of modern Europe have hardly left a trace upon the distribution of its peoples. Only in the Balkan Peninsula, as the frontiers of the Turkish Empire have been forced back from the Danube, the alien Turks have ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... foregoing pages reference was made to certain acts of benevolence done to Cardan by the family of Archinto. It is not impossible that the promises and persuasions of his young patron Filippo may have had some weight in inducing Jerome to shift his home once more. Whatever befell he could hardly make his case worse; but whether Filippo had promised help or not, he showed himself now a true and valuable friend. There was in Milan a public lectureship in geometry and astronomy supported ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... father was named Vandam. The family had been a little ashamed of the old Dutch cognomen; it had such a wicked sound that they tried to shift the accent to the first syllable. Among the fads that Charley had taken up for a time after he came to New York was that of collecting old prints. In looking over a lot of these one day in a second-hand book-shop, he stumbled on a picture of ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... with a curious looking load. Upon a nearer approach I could distinguish some large object upon the camel's back, that was steadied by two men, one of whom walked on either side. I had a foreboding that something was wrong, and in a few minutes I clearly perceived a man lying upon a make-shift litter, carried by the camel, while the Sheik Abou Do and Suleiman accompanied the party upon horseback; a third led ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker

... decided, after a brief conference between Captain Amber and Cornelys Jensen, that we should transfer our company as fast as might be to the near island, for there was no knowing when the smooth weather might shift again and how long our Royal Christopher would hold together if the waves, which were now lapping against its sides, grew angrier. It was resolved that the most pressing business was to send on shore at once the women and children and ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... a healthy as well as a high mind; but the fever and ague of an absorbing passion were telling on it. Like many a great heart before his day, his heart was tossed like a ship, and went up to heaven, and down again to despair, as a girl's humor shifted, or seemed to shift, for he forgot that there is such a thing as accident, and that her sex are even more under its dominion than ours. No; whatever she did must be spontaneous, voluntary, premeditated even, and her lightest word worth weighing, her lightest action ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... paraphernalia of his delightful calling—a punching bag, small dumb-bells, a skipping rope, boxing gloves. Here the neophyte had been taught the niceties of feint and guard and lead, of the right cross, the uppercut, the straight left, to duck, to side-step, to shift lightly on his feet, to stop protruding his jaw in cordial invitation, to keep his stomach covered. He proved attentive and willing and quick. He was soon chewing gum as Spike Brennon chewed it, and had his hair clipped in Brennon manner. He lived his days and his nights in ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson

... Mrs. Thrale on March 19, 1777:—'You are all young, and gay, and easy; but I have miserable nights, and know not how to make them better; but I shift pretty well a-days, and so have at you all at Dr. Burney's to-morrow.' Piozzi ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... great advantage in being able to shift the scene, and to go backwards or forwards in time as he may find necessary. We must go back to that fine, bright, but bitterly cold morning when Lieutenant Devereux and his companions set off to visit the frigate. They were strong and hardy, had thick coats, and, besides, ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... the evening he made his master's bed, the chimeras of Planchet faded away. The bed was the only one in the apartment, which consisted of an antechamber and a bedroom. Planchet slept in the antechamber upon a coverlet taken from the bed of d'Artagnan, and which d'Artagnan from that time made shift ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... and should be common to all women. But that "providing" does not have to be done in person. The mother has long since deputed to the father the two main lines of child care—defence and maintenance. She has allowed her responsibility to shift in this matter on the ground that he could do it ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... pitted like a colander, and who seemed to have been made on purpose to wait on Valerie, smiled meaningly in reply, and brought the dressing-gown. Valerie took off her combing-wrapper; she was in her shift, and she wriggled into the dressing-gown like a snake into a ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... it illumes this picture, it half disperses the gloom on that. I could imagine that, as in a fairy tale, the books do but await my departure to begin talking among themselves. A little tongue of flame shoots up from a dying ember; shadows shift upon the ceiling and the walls. With a sigh of utter contentment, I go forth, and shut the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing

... a copper wire connected in circuit with it be warmed at one point. Moreover, it has been found by Lord Kelvin that if an iron wire is heated at any point, and an electric current be passed through it, the hot point will shift along the wire in a direction contrary ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro

... time traversed so much of the Boca that it became necessary for her to shift her helm in order to avoid grounding upon a sandspit that stretched athwart her course, and here the advantage and value of Dick Chichester's previous observations became apparent; for so sharp was the bend, and so little was there to indicate ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... parties can depend on his justice and impartiality. Responsible government makes the premier and his ministers responsible for the constitution of the committees and for the opinions and decisions that may emanate from them. A government that would constantly endeavour to shift its responsibilities on committees, even of its own selection, would soon disappear from the treasury benches. Responsibility in legislation is accordingly ensured, financial measures prevented from being made the footballs of ambitious and irresponsible politicians, and ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... farthing was, alas! a great sum to me. I was as tall as I am now, and I had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money not expended for us at market was twopence a week for each man. I remember, and well I may! that upon one occasion I had, after all absolutely necessary expenses, made shift to have a half-penny in reserve, which I had destined for the purpose of a red herring in the morning, but so hungry as to be hardly able to endure life, when I pulled off my clothes at night, I found that I had lost my half-penny. I buried my head in the miserable sheet and rug, and ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... if he pleased to go before, I would follow him: so in he went, and I after him; but when I came at the middle, there it was so deep that the water went over my head, but I made shift to keep my feet to the ground, and got well on the other side; and my guide and I went up together very pleasantly. When we came to the top of the hill, there was a wide plain, and in the middle thereof the house stood. ...
— A Short History of a Long Travel from Babylon to Bethel • Stephen Crisp

... will transact no business with a friend. What a friend is, he is socially and intellectually; and I rate social and intellectual friendship too high to degrade it on either side into a pecuniary make-shift. To be sure there are, and I have, what is called business friends; that is, commercial acquaintances, very convenient persons. But I draw a red-ink line between them and my friends in the true sense—my friends social and intellectual. In brief, a true friend has nothing to do with ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... cross-bows,—for Pizarro's troops do not seem to have been provided with muskets on this expedition,—and then gallantly charging the enemy, sword in hand, succeeded in driving them back into the fastnesses of the mountains. But it only led them to shift their operations to another quarter, and make an assault ,,n Pizarro before he could be relieved by ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... prose, as was his custom, on a sort of knight- errantry after thoughts and images:—"The lawn thou hast chosen for thy bridal shift—thy shroud may be of the same piece. That flower thou hast bought to feed thy vanity—from the same tree thy corpse may be decked. Reynolds shall, like his colors, fly; and Brown, when mingled with the dust, manure the grounds he once laid out. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... for a place at the shop, if it was only a few shillings a week. Nice come-down for Nancy Lord, wasn't it? Of course Beatrice sent her off with a flea in her ear. I don't know where she's living, but I've heard that her husband has gone to America, and left her to shift for herself, now there's nothing more to be ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... left standing on shore, "Ah 'opes they'll make it, but it's a fearsome resk, an' Gawd 'elp 'em if come a shift o' ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe



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