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To divide; to distribute; to apportion. [Obs.] To which God of his bounty would shift Crowns two of flowers well smelling. Chaucer.

Admitting of being shifted.

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.

The quality or state of being shifty. Diplomatic shiftiness and political versatility. J. A. Syminds.

Changing in place, position, or direction; varying; variable; fickle; as, shifting winds; shifting opinions or principles.

In a shifting manner.

wn support, through negligence or incapacity; hence, lazy; improvident; thriftless; as, a shiftless fellow; shiftless management. -- Shift"less*ly, adv. -- Shift"less*ness, n.

Full of, or ready with, shifts; fertile in expedients or contrivance. Wright. Shifty and thrifty as old Greek or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent, and perhaps nothing he could not endure. C. Kingsley.

That with which one makes shift; a temporary expedient. James Mill. I am not a model clergyman, only a decent makeshift. G. Eliot.

One who moves the scenes in a theater; a sceneman.

The trick of a shopkeeper; deception. [Obs.] B. Jonson.

Shiftless; helpless. [Obs.]

ion, and the like; to refute. No man was able to answer him a word. Matt. xxii. 46. These shifts refuted, answer thine appellant. Milton. The reasoning was not and could not be answered. Macaulay.

Anything provided as a substitute; a makeshift. He goes to work devising apologies for window curtains. Dickens.

To check by shifts and turns; to elude; to foil. The art that baffles time's tyrannic claim. Cowper.

rths that kings. B. Jonson. Others hatch their eggs and tend the birth till it is able to shift for itself. Addison.

Shifting the sword from one side of an adversary's sword to the other.

A shift, or undergarment, worn by women.

To use shifts, cavils, or artifices. Burke.

To vary or shift suddenly; as, the wind chops about.