shift

UK/ˈʃɪft/US/ˈʃɪft/

nounB14 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #1,375 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: shifted, shifting, shifts

A shift is the block of hours you work before somebody else takes the job off you. The ward changes hands at eight; the factory runs three shifts a day; you swap your Saturday shift with a friend who owes you one.

Shift is a verb too, and a plain physical one: shift the sofa a bit to the left, shift your weight off that ankle, shift the boxes out of the hall. From there it goes abstract without changing shape — the wind shifts, opinion shifts, a country shifts towards something new, and a shift in policy is a change of direction rather than a change of heart. Note the preposition: a shift in something, or a shift towards it. Two habits worth knowing. Shift the blame is what people do when they move responsibility onto somebody who was not in the room, and on a keyboard Shift is the key that gives you capitals.

Definitions of shift

1nounshiftA block of working hours, ending when the next person takes over.B1~20%
“He works the night shift at the bakery and sleeps all afternoon.”
synonyms: stint, spell
2verbmoveTo move something a short way, or to move yourself.B1~27%
“Can you shift your bag so I can sit down?”
3nounchangeA change in position, opinion, or the way things are done.B1~48%
“There has been a real shift in how people talk about it.”
4nounkeyThe key on a keyboard that gives you capital letters.B1~5%
“Hold shift and press the number for the symbol above it.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 154 sentences found in the wild and placed 124 of them on a sense (30 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

shift the blame — move responsibility onto somebody else

Also practised as

verbTo move something from where it is to somewhere else.

Where it comes from

Old English sċiftan did not mean to move. It meant to divide something into shares — to sort, to arrange, to put in order — and under that sits a root, *skey-, meaning simply to cut apart. A work shift is still the older word doing its old job: the day cut into pieces and handed round.

Proto-Indo-European
*skey-
Proto-Indo-European
*skeyb- — to separate, divide, part
Proto-Germanic
*skiftijaną
Proto-West Germanic
*skiftijan
Old English
sċiftan — to divide, separate into shares; appoint, ordain; arrange, organise
Middle English
schiften
English, today
shift

Built from

*skipatjaną · Proto-Germanic — to organise, put in order

The verb is from Middle English schiften, from Old English sċiftan (“to divide, separate into shares; appoint, ordain; arrange, organise”), from Proto-West Germanic skiftijan, from Proto-Germanic skiftijaną, skiptijaną, from earlier skipatjaną (“to organise, put in order”), from Proto-Indo-European skeyb- (“to separate, divide, part”), from Proto-Indo-European skey- (“to cut, divide, separate, part”). Cognate with Scots schift, skift (“to shift”), West Frisian skifte, skiftsje (“to sort”), Dutch schiften (“to sort, screen, winnow, part”), Low German schichten (“to stack, layer”), German schichten (“to stack, layer”), Swedish skifta (“to shift, change, exchange, vary”), Norwegian skifte (“to shift”), Icelandic skipta (“to switch”). See ship. The noun is from Middle English schyft, shyffte. Cognate with Dutch schift (“split, fissure”), German Schicht (“layer, shift”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Work & Careers, A Man Called Ove, Office & Admin, Ways of Moving, Factory & Manufacturing

First appears in chapter 1 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

shift in the wild

A common example of Doppler shift is the change of pitch heard when a vehicle approaches and recedes from an observer.
Doppler effect
Alternatively, the phase shift of each symbol sent can be measured with respect to the phase of the previous symbol sent.
Phase-shift keying
For example, with a left shift of 3, D would be replaced by A, E would become B, and so on.
Caesar cipher
The practice typically sees the day divided into shifts, set periods of time during which different groups of workers perform their duties.
Shift work
The term "shift work" includes both long-term night shifts and work schedules in which employees change or rotate shifts.
Shift work

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of shift

1nounshiftA block of working hours, ending when the next person takes over.B1~20%

“He works the night shift at the bakery and sleeps all afternoon.”

synonyms: stint, spell

2verbmoveTo move something a short way, or to move yourself.B1~27%

“Can you shift your bag so I can sit down?”

3nounchangeA change in position, opinion, or the way things are done.B1~48%

“There has been a real shift in how people talk about it.”

4nounkeyThe key on a keyboard that gives you capital letters.B1~5%

“Hold shift and press the number for the symbol above it.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 154 sentences found in the wild and placed 124 of them on a sense (30 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.