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tion. (b) (Mech.) Having one side flat and the other rounded; -- said of a file. -- Half shift (Mus.), a position of the hand, between the open position and the first shift, in playing on the violin and kindred instruments. See Shift. -- Half step (Mus.), a semitone; the smallest difference of pitch or interval, used…

To pull apart, as oxen sometimes do when yoked. To haul around (Naut.), to shift to any point of the compass; -- said of the wind. -- To haul off (Naut.), to sail closer to the wind, in order to get farther away from anything; hence, to withdraw; to draw back.

der. -- To feel the helm, to obey it. -- To right the helm, to put it amidships. -- To shift the helm, to bear the tiller over to the corresponding position on the opposite side of the vessel. Ham. Nav. Encyc.

To shift, or swing round, as a sail, boom, yard, etc., as in tacking.

To shift, as the boom of a fore-and-aft sail, from one side of a vessel to the other when the wind is aft or on the quarter. See Gybe.

mp seat. (a) A movable carriage seat. (b) A carriage constructed with a seat which may be shifted so as to make room for second or extra seat. Also used adjectively; as, a jump-seat wagon.

y of beautiful colors and symmetrical forms. It has been much employed in arts of design. Shifting like the fragments of colored glass in the kaleidoscope. G. W. Cable.

robably as early as the 3d century b. c. , often called the first Lautverschiebung, sound shifting, or consonant shifting. (b) A somewhat similar set of changes taking place in the High German dialects (less fully in modern literary German) from the 6th to the 8th century, known as the second Lautverschiebung, the resu…

those used on the tramways in mines to carry coal or rubbish; also, a barrow or truck for shifting baggage, as at railway stations.

To dodge; to shift; to play tricks. I . . . am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch. Shak.

A person employed to shift scenery in a theater.

aut.) (a) To increase the quantity of sail already extended. (b) To set sail. -- To make shift, to manage by expedients; as, they made shift to do without it. [Colloq.]. -- To make sternway, to move with the stern foremost; to go or drift backward. -- To make strange, to act in an unfriendly manner or as if surprise…

Possibility; uncertainty. [R.] What they offer is mere maybe and shift. Creech.

hers; to molt; hence, to change; to put on a new appearance. Now everything doth mew, And shifts his rustic winter robe. Turbervile.

hange of key, whether transient, or until the music becomes established in the new key; a shifting of the tonality of a piece, so that the harmonies all center upon a new keynote or tonic; the art of transition out of the original key into one nearly related, and so on, it may be, by successive changes, into a key quit…

To scrape together, as money, by mean labor or shifts. [Obs.] Udall.

To act in insincere or deceitful manner; to play false; to equivocate; to shift; to dodge; to trifle. Romans, that have spoke the word, And will not palter. Shak. Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with eternal God for power. Tennyson.

old dotard, in the Italian comedy; also, a buffoon in pantomimes. Addison. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon. Shak.

ncipal judicial courts. Parliament heel, the inclination of a ship when made to careen by shifting her cargo or ballast. -- Parliament hinge (Arch.), a hinge with so great a projection from the wall or frame as to allow a door or shutter to swing back flat against the wall. -- Long Parliament, Rump Parliament. See un…

To avoid; to shift or put off; to evade. The French government has parried the payment of our claims. E. Everett.