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Shift   Listen
verb
Shift  v. i.  
1.
To divide; to distribute. (Obs.) "Some this, some that, as that him liketh shift."
2.
To make a change or changes; to change position; to move; to veer; to substitute one thing for another; used in the various senses of the transitive verb. "The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon." "Here the Baillie shifted and fidgeted about in his seat."
3.
To resort to expedients for accomplishing a purpose; to contrive; to manage. "Men in distress will look to themselves, and leave their companions to shift as well as they can."
4.
To practice indirect or evasive methods. "All those schoolmen, though they were exceeding witty, yet better teach all their followers to shift, than to resolve by their distinctions."
5.
(Naut.) To slip to one side of a ship, so as to destroy the equilibrum; said of ballast or cargo; as, the cargo shifted.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Shift" Quotes from Famous Books



... passed near the place where I was. I made a sign with the linen of my turban, and called to them as loud as I could. They heard me, and sent a boat to bring me on board, when the mariners asked by what misfortune I came thither. I told them that I had suffered shipwreck two days ago, and made shift to get ashore with the goods they saw. It was happy for me that those people did not consider the place where I was, nor inquire into the probability of what I told them; but without any more ado took me on board with my goods. When I came to the ship, the captain was so well pleased to ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon

... wrong one: in this mad work must several years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever-new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from side to side: till at length, as exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... "Going to shift us about on another track, I guess. I was nearly thrown down when I tried to get on the platform. I never saw a road where they were ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... expected and were prepared for the crisis. Von Blitz and Rasula, who had played second fiddle until he could stand it no longer, were surprised and somewhat staggered by the peremptory tone of the call, but could see no chance for the American to shift his troublesome burden. The subdued, sullen air of the men who filled the torchlighted market-place brooded ill for any attempt Chase might make to reconcile them to his peculiar views, no matter how thoroughly they may have been misunderstood ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... and their area by thousands of square miles. The slow oscillations of the crust of the earth, producing great changes in the distribution of land and water, have often obliged the living matter of the coral-builders to shift the locality of its operations; and, by variation and adaptation to these modifications of condition, its forms have as often changed. The work it has done in the past is, for the most part, swept away, but fragments remain; and, if there were no other evidence, suffice to prove the general constancy ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... not possible to write and indite such prescribed orders, rules, and commissions to you the agents and factors, but that occasion, time, and place, and the pleasures of the princes, together with the operation or success of fortune, shall change or shift the same, although not in the whole, yet in part, therefore the said company do commit to you their dear and entire beloved agents and factors, to do in this behalf for the commodity and wealth of this company, as by your discretions, upon good advised deliberations, shall be thought ...
— The Discovery of Muscovy etc. • Richard Hakluyt

... which the dividing line between the territories of Switzerland and those of the King of Sardinia passes, was abeam, and the excellent calculations of the sagacious Maso became still more apparent. He had foreseen another shift of wind, as the consequence of all this poise and counterpoise, and he was here met by the true breeze of the night. The last current came out of the gorge of the Valais, sullen, strong, and hoarse, bringing him, however, fairly to windward of his port. ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... And it's a swagger stunt too, this talkin' without sayin' anything. When you get so you can keep it up for an hour you're qualified either for the afternoon tea class or the batty ward. But the lady ain't here just to pay a social call. She makes a quick shift and announces that she's Miss Colliver, also hoping that ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... from 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 air pollution; ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... were both silent, until at last Barnaby made shift to say, though in a hoarse and croaking voice, that Captain Malyoe must be a very happy man, and that if he were in Captain Malyoe's place he would be the happiest man in the world. Thus, having spoken, and so found his tongue, he went on to tell ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... Tobin," he exclaimed with enthusiasm. "Why can't ye take the trouble to shift seats, and come front here long o' me? We could put one buff'lo top o' the other,—they're both wearin' thin,—and set close, and I do' know but we sh'd be ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett

... still, it must be owned that he wasn't exactly the kind of man to stand firm in the midst of a rabble of wild Mohammedans, all howling and flourishing their knives at once under his very nose. To tell the plain truth, he was frightened out of his wits; and the only thing he thought of was how to shift the responsibility on to somebody else's shoulders as fast as possible. So he said (and it was very lucky he did, as it turned out) that Latour, being in government employ, must be tried by military law; and he packed them all off to the commandant, who, as I've told you, was no other ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... north-west, but the weather still continued squally and unsettled. As the weather began now to be rather cold, and as in the track I meant to prosecute my voyage by I might expect to have it considerably colder, and consequently the ship's company would require a shift of cloathing, slops were served to all who stood ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... the trade as "compound,"—that is, a machine that maintains a constant pressure automatically and does not require an attendant—was picked up second-hand, through a newspaper "ad" and cost $90. The switchboard, a make-shift affair, not very handsome, but just as serviceable as if it were made of marble, cost less than $25 all told. The transmission wire cost $19 a hundred pounds; it is of copper, and covered with weatherproofed ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... does is complete; like yourself, and nobody else. But still, I think, there is no occasion for the Commander in Chief to expose his person as much as you do. Why should you not have a private flag, known to your fleet and not to the enemy, when you shift ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson

... Wren helped his wife so spryly that long before midday the house-cleaning was finished. Although she tried her best, Mrs. Rusty could think of no more tasks for her husband to do—except to feed the children. That was a duty that would not be finished until they were old enough to leave home and shift for themselves. ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey

... to the rest of his kindred. After that done, we went about getting things, as ribbands and gloves, ready for the burial. Which in the afternoon was done; where, it being Sunday, all people far and near come in; and in the greatest disorder that ever I saw we made shift to serve them with what we had of mine and other things; and then to carry him to the church, where Mr. Taylor buried him, and Mr. Turner preached ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys

... alter our course, as soon as we had got out of sight of the brig, to the southward, hoping that we might be picked up by some vessel bound to Loando, the nearest European settlement on the coast. One thing was certain, that should the wind shift to the eastward we should have no choice, but should be compelled to run back for ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston

... poor! I've been poor all my life—always having to skimp and save and do things on the cheap—go without this and make shift with that. I'm tired of it! This last two months with Aunt Elvira—all this luxury and beauty," she gestured eloquently towards the villa standing like a gem in its exquisite Italian setting, "the car, the perfect service, as many frocks as I want—Oh! I've loved it all! And ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... can be done, and now some aviators practice plying upside down to get used to doing it in case they have to by some accidental shift of the wind. Some of them can turn complete somersaults, though this is mostly done in monoplanes, and seldom in a biplane, which is much more stable in ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis

... guess her purpose, before he could shift the rifle from the hollow of his arm, the fingers of Plutina's right hand had slipped within the open bodice. The Colt's flashed in the sunlight. The level barrel lay motionless, in deadly readiness. For the girl, though not yet quite sure, was almost sure that ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... the idle conversation of a summer evening: no one paid any further attention to it, nor did even Lavender himself think again of his vaguely-expressed hope of some day visiting Tarbert. Let us now shift the scene of this narrative ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... had time to dim or shift perceptibly in Colonel Everard's big room while so much was settling itself for Neil and Judith. The Colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on his unconscious face. Now the boy was kneeling beside him. ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton

... once an unaccountable emotion. There was a strange glitter in his light green eyes that made Abel shift rather uneasily on his feet. "Was that before this pretty minx you have just let out came in here ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green

... and being eager to shift the responsibility of speech to other shoulders, suggested that perhaps the master had better inquire further from ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson

... know that, sir. You have never seen the woods afire for miles as I have; if you had, you would know what it was. We have two chances; one is, that we may have torrents of rain come down with the gale, and the other is that the wind may shift a point or two, which would be the best chance for us of ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat

... snore all Day, Others in Gambols with their Wh——es to play; The Dunghill Trapes, trickt up like virtuous Trull, If by good Chance, she gets a Dupe or Cull; On Tallyman intrudes twelve Hours more, And for a clean Shift ...
— The Ladies Delight • Anonymous

... this 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 the existence of the shoal, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... to shift," he said: "John Knox was in the right o't. 'Pull down the nests and the craws will fly away.' No more cells for lads from the ploughtail and the heather. No more bloody whipping-posts, where one or two ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett

... makes shift, To tell you what his name is: With orange on head, and his ginger-bread, Clem Waspe of ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris

... whether they were not parts of the same entity or being, manifesting itself in sundry shapes, yet springing from one centre, as different coloured rays flow from the same crystal, while the beams from their source of light shift and change. But the fancy is too metaphysical for my poor powers to express as clearly as I would. Also no doubt it was but a hallucination that had its origin, perhaps, in the mischievous brain of her who ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... below, and I said to them that we must decide between going afoot and making some canoes out of these pine trees. Canoes were decided on, and we never let the axes rest, night or day till we had them completed. While my working shift was off, I took an hour or two, for a little hunting, and on a low divide partly grown over with small pines and juniper I found signs, old and new, of many elk, and so concluded the country was well stocked with noble game. The two canoes, when completed ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly

... perpetual embarrassment. Where it still received nothing but the customary shilling, it had to pay out three for material and wages, whose price had risen and was rising. In this embarrassment, in spite of every subterfuge and shift, the Crown was in perpetual, urgent, and increasing need. Rigid and novel taxes were imposed, loans were raised and not repaid, but something far more was needed to save the situation, with prices still rising as the ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... whoops and shrieks, till they reached the French advance-guard, which consisted of Canadians; and here they demanded protection from the officers, who refused to give it, telling them that they must take to the woods and shift for themselves. Frye was seized by a number of Indians, who, brandishing spears and tomahawks, threatened him with death and tore off his clothing, leaving nothing but breeches, shoes, and shirt. Repelled by the officers of the guard, he made for the woods. A Connecticut ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... too great," said Godfrey, shrugging his shoulders. "When I am reduced to my last shift, it will be time ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... distance out of measure! Vibrating over the sands and through the rocks, filling the immense void, crying out as it were for the sphinx, a veritable de profundis of the wastes. The vultures, who hold the fort during the day have given way to the night shift, the jackals. These come from all directions; from the caves in the earth, from among the rocks, from here, there, and from everywhere to take up their hygienic services where it has been left off ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... Finding the weather very hot, Officiates with his wat'ring-pot; And still attending through the glade, Is ostentatious of his aid. Caesar turns to another row, Where neither sun nor rain could go; He, for the nearest cut he knows, Is still before with pot and rose. Caesar observes him twist and shift, And understands the fellow's drift; "Here, you sir," says th' imperial lord. The bustler, hoping a reward, Runs skipping up. The chief in jest Thus the poor jackanapes address'd "As here is no great matter done, Small is the premium you have won: The cuffs that ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... improperly write on his forehead, "Warehouse to let!" He always dealt too much in generalities for a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his principles to the points in debate. I remember Robert Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift; whereas Mackintosh was uniformly candid in argument. I am ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge

... transition from classic to romantic premises of taste is characterized by the separation of art from morals. This step neither Cooper nor Armstrong takes. But they do exhibit tendencies which explain how the shift was made possible. Both writers insist on a felt response to a work of art. Cooper emphasizes that this response must be to the whole work. This assumption implies that a work of art is an entity complete in itself; it makes possible the argument ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen

... the association. The earthquake is the manifestation of rupture and slip, and, as Suess has shown, the epicentres shift along that fault line where the crust has yielded.[1] The volcano marks the spot where the zone of fusion is brought so high in the fractured crust that the melted materials are ...
— The Birth-Time of the World and Other Scientific Essays • J. (John) Joly

... barrister can live with suitable dignity and comfort. If he has to maintain the expenses of a distant circuit Mr. Briefless requires from L100 to L200 more. Alas! how many of Mr. Briefless's meritorious and most ornamental kind are compelled to shift on far less ample means! How many of them periodically repeat the jest of poor A——, who made this brief and suggestive official return to the Income Tax Commissioners—"I am totally dependent on my father, who ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... taste of thrift in poverty, not so much because of the poverty, but because they never get settled long enough to develop the hen-nesting instinct and house pride that is dormant in us all. They simply make a shift of things till the next conference meets, when they will be moved ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris

... across his path and he stopped to help him up, but the man screamed when he touched him and an officer shouted, "Forward! Forward!" so he ran on again. It was a long jog through the mist, and he was often obliged to shift his rifle. When at last they lay panting behind the railroad embankment, he looked about him. He had felt the need of action, of a desperate physical struggle, of killing and crushing. He had been seized with ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... eyes became fixed upon that group of dials again. Their indicators began to shift, some rapidly, some slowly. Once the agent gave a swift glance through a round window—the place seemed to be lighted by ordinary daylight—and Smith saw something ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint

... 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, ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... shift the scenes till high aloft The young moon sets her crescent horn, And in gray evening's emerald sea The beauteous Star ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells

... who was still wet, and the spray beating over the head of our boat leaked through to us, so that we were almost as wet as he. In this manner we lay all night, with very little rest; but the wind abating the next day, we made a shift to reach Amboy before night, having been thirty hours on the water, without victuals, or any drink but a bottle of filthy rum, the water we sailed on ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... roll away To vanish in the ether blue, Eastward the curtains light and gay Exclude the glorious sun from view Till, as they shift, he flashes through And lights ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... constant sum of power made up of items among which the most Protean fluctuations are incessantly going on. It is as if the body of nature were alive, the thrill and interchange of its energies resembling those of an organism. The parts of the stupendous whole shift and change, augment and diminish, appear and disappear; while the total of which they are the parts remains quantitatively immutable, plus accompanies minus, gain accompanies loss, no item varying in the slightest degree without an ...
— The Romance of Mathematics • P. Hampson

... Palestine are two: (1) Revival of national consciousness, (2) Relief of the persecuted. In regard to the second, the Zionist organization, constantly working to shift emigration from West to East, has in a measure focused it upon Palestine; and more important, it is rapidly perfecting adequate machinery, which once securing the motive power of money in such quantities as is now devoted to the Jewish Colonization ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... justly doubt the virtue of his motives. William Walker, perhaps the foremost of them all, invaded Lower California in 1854, attempted to found a republic, was defeated, and later conquered Nicaragua and became its president, only to shift about in his meteoric career of destiny and sail against Honduras, where he was captured, court-martialled, and shot ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... barrier would block the fire on the west, just as the burnt-over area would protect the north. For the present at least the fire-fighters could confine their efforts to the south and east, where the spread of the blaze would involve the Jackpot. A shift in the wind would change the situation, and if it came in time would probably ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... stares at them with frightened eyes. After a pause she ventures uncertainly, as if she were not sure hut what these figures might be creatures of her dream). Father. (Her eyes shift to Mrs. Brennan's face and she shudders.) ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... deal with the delicate gradations of a lover's mood. He passed the word about that Kathleen Somers was not going to die—though I believe he did it with his heart in his mouth, not really assured she wouldn't. It took some of us a long time to shift our ground and be thankful. Withrow, with a wisdom beyond his habit, did not go near her until autumn. Reports were that she was gaining all the time, and that she lived out-of-doors staring at Habakkuk and his brethren, gathering wild flowers and pressing them between her palms. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Cromwell at Whitehall, and told him that, if he would dissolve his Parliament, the officers would take care of him, but that, if he refused to do so, they would do it without him, and leave him to shift for himself." There was some consultation, in which Broghill, Fiennes, Thurloe, Wolseley, and Whitlocke, took part. Whitlocke, as he tells us, was against a dissolution even in that extremity; but most of the others thought it inevitable. Richard, therefore, reluctantly yielded; but, as he ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Virginian; and his strictures are hypercritical. As Roland threw his head back fiercely to scatter the spume-flakes, it would be easy enough for the rider to see the eye-sockets and the bloodfull nostrils. Every one has noticed how a horse will do the ear-shift, putting one ear forward and one back at the same moment. Browning has an imaginative reason for it. One ear is pushed forward to listen for danger ahead; the other bent back, to catch his master's voice. Was there ever a greater study in passionate ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps

... Nurse-keeping; a liquorish sweet-tooth'd Child-bed woman, & a plentifull housekeeping, is not every where. And you may certainly beleeve, that the month will be no sooner ended, then that you'l begin to stink here; for the Mistris will begin to consider with her self, that she can make a shift with the Maid and Wet-Nurse; so that then you must expect to ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... was pulled off, and he was left uncovered and unprotected; in another moment a violent snatch carried away the blanket upon which he was sitting, and he was nearly tumbled off the bed with it. As the next thing might be a blow in the dark, he felt that it was high time to shift his quarters; so he made a desperate leap from the bed, and alighted on the opposite side of the room, calling for his host, who immediately came to his relief by opening the door. Williams then told him that the devil—or something as bad, he believed—was ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman

... the enterprise that should be his doom; it has even been suggested that he formed the central character of the poem. If this suggestion be true—and its truth is exceedingly doubtful—we are confronted with what was in reality only a false shift, the diversion of the interest from the main issues of the story to a side issue. The Iliad cannot be quoted in his defence; there we have an episode of a ten years' siege, which in itself possesses ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... good, there is no bad; these be the whims of mortal will." They change with place, they shift with race. "Each Vice has borne a Virtue's crown, all Good was banned as Sin or Crime." He takes up the history of the world, as we reconstruct it for the period before history, from geology, astronomy and other sciences. He accepts ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... be who tried his door so stealthily? Before to-night that room had had no tenant. Apparently one of the passengers had seen fit to shift his quarters. To what end? To keep a jealous eye on the Lone Wolf, perhaps? So much the better, then: Lanyard need only make enquiry in the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph

... indicting him who is my teacher, and who will be the ruin, not of the young, but of the old; that is to say, of myself whom he instructs, and of his old father whom he admonishes and chastises. And if Meletus refuses to listen to me, but will go on, and will not shift the indictment from me to you, I cannot do better than repeat this ...
— Euthyphro • Plato

... he muttered; "I must shift my ground till I find the fish more inclined to be caught." He looked round towards Gregson, who was pulling up fish as fast as he could. "His basket must be already nearly full, and I have not caught even a ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... the disk of a magnetic telephone with respect to the poles of the magnet there corresponds a certain distribution of the lines of force, which latter shift themselves when the disk is vibrating. If the bobbin be met by these lines in motion, there will develop in its wire a difference of potential that, according to Faraday's law, will be proportional to their number. All ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various

... you what you want,' replied Sponge, in a tone of determination, adding, 'you can make shift for ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... conduct of the younger members of the fast set to 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

... as isinglass, hartshorn jelly, gum arabic. Ten grains of rhubarb every night. Callico or flannel shift, opium, balsams. See Class I. 2. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... higher race of existence, calmly carving out the world for themselves—a tribe of Epicurean deities, with the cabinet for their Olympus, stooping to our inferior region only to enjoy their own atmosphere afterwards with the greater zest, or shift their quarters, like the poet's Jupiter, when tired of the dust and clamour of war, moving off on his clouds and with his attendant goddesses, to the tranquil ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... it, Ned. If we get up at all we'll be all right. Catch hold there, and shift that rear weight a little forward on the rod. I ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Glider - or, Seeking the Platinum Treasure • Victor Appleton

... aw sat an watched th' yule log awd put on to th' fire, As it crackled, an sparkled, an flared up wi sich gusto an spirit, An when it wor touched it shone breeter, an flared up still higher, Till at last aw'd to shift th' cheer further back for aw couldn't bide ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley

... things that could shift the advantage to their side. One of the things that could defeat us is fear—fear of the task we face, fear of adjusting to it, fear that breeds more fear, sapping our faith, corroding our liberties, turning citizen against citizen, ally against ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman

... few minutes, Rrisa's eyes vaguely opened. He gulped, gasped, made shift to speak a few ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England

... were, small fish making shift to live precariously with other small fish in a pool where big fish swam lazily. If one small fish now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower

... sinews. For I conform to shapes of different figure in turn, and am altered at my own sweet will: now my neck is star-high, and soars nigh to the lofty Thunderer; then it falls and declines to human strength, and plants again on earth that head which was near the firmament. Thus I lightly shift my body into diverse phases, and am beheld in varying wise; for changefully now cramped stiffness draws in my limbs, now the virtue of my tall body unfolds them, and suffers them to touch the cloud-tops. Now I am short and straitened, now stretch out with loosened ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... who still stood as a hand-post to guide her; then, passing on, she flew round the fatal bush where the undergrowth narrowed to a gorge. Marty arrived at her heels just in time to see the result. Fitzpiers had quickly stepped forward in front of Winterborne, who, disdaining to shift his position, had turned on his heel, and then the surgeon did what he would not have thought of doing but for Mrs. Melbury's encouragement and the sentiment of an eve which effaced conventionality. Stretching out his arms as the white figure burst ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... that Desroches is sincere' (such is the instinct of love); 'he would like to marry me, and he is paying court to some tradesman's daughter as well. I should very much like to know whether I am a second shift, and whether marriage is a matter of money with him.' The fact was that Desroches, deep as he was, could not make out du Tillet, and was afraid that he might marry Malvina. So the fellow had secured his retreat. His position was intolerable, he was scarcely paying ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac

... every shift and change in the perplexing postal arrangements, the value of the seediest, weediest Egyptian garron offered for sale in Cairo or Alexandria, who could talk a telegraph-clerk into amiability and soothe the ruffled vanity of a newly appointed staff-officer when ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling

... the deadly smother he could press With calm his lofty manhood; interpose Purpose divine, and at the last disclose For life's great shift a regnant readiness. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... our looks. I suppose her captain thinks that, having hauled his wind, we shall now make sail in chase of him if we happen to be an enemy. But I know a trick worth two of that. You did quite right, Mr Bowen, not to shift your helm. Let him stand on another three miles as he is going, and then we will show him who and what we are. Just so; there goes his bunting—Dutch, as you thought. He is beginning to feel a little anxious. Perhaps it would ease his mind a bit if you were to run the tricolour ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood

... and buoy it up so that it will rise in the air and take you with it. This rise will not be great, just enough to keep you well clear of the ground. Now project your legs a little to the front so as to shift the center of gravity a trifle and bring the edges of the glider on an exact level with the atmosphere. This, with the momentum acquired in the start, will keep the machine moving forward for ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell

... sat up there in the Op'ry-house last night listening to your game, and says I to myself, 'Thim railroad shift-bosses know their trade.' 'Twas a gr-reat talk you gave us, and it'll make the swinging of the har-rd-rock vote as easy as twice two. Of course, we have a thin paring on the ore rate; you'll be knowing that as well as annybody in the game, I'm thinking. 'Tis well that we fellows at the top ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... this it was enjoin'd the Israelites, Though leave were giv'n them, as thou know'st, to change The offering, still to offer. Th' other part, The matter and the substance of the vow, May well be such, to that without offence It may for other substance be exchang'd. But at his own discretion none may shift The burden on his shoulders, unreleas'd By either key, the yellow and the white. Nor deem of any change, as less than vain, If the last bond be not within the new Included, as the quatre in the ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... possessions, and that the only business of the citizens was to provide for themselves;" a priestly answer, importing that the god considered his possessions, and not the flock, were the treasure. The one was sure to be defended by a divinity, the other might shift ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... length he learned that it came flowing out of the dark hard earth, the mystery only grew. He imagined a wondrous cavity below in black rock, where it gathered and gathered, nobody could think how—not coming from anywhere else, but beginning just there, and nowhere beyond. When, later on, he had to shift its source, and carry it back to the great sky, it was no less marvellous, and more lovely; it was a closer binding together of the gentle earth and the awful withdrawing heavens. These were a region of endless hopes, and ever recurrent ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... As the lights shift, two Indians appear bearing a great number of codfish which are being examined by Champlain and his men. The Indians show the hooks and lines with which they catch these fish. Noting some growing corn, Champlain tries ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... the treachery of his companion in guilt, and endeavours to be first in disclosing it. In the case I am now speaking of, this experience was never more verified than in the attempt on the part of these two murderers each to shift the guilt on ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton

... an orphan, reared by his grandparents, and at an early age compelled to shift for himself. Thus he was somewhat at a disadvantage among the other boys; yet even this fact may have helped to develop in him courage and ingenuity. One little incident of his boy life, occurring at about his tenth year, is characteristic of the man. In ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... drift-ice in the offing. The night's frost had bound these so firmly together that the attempt failed. We were thus compelled to lie-to at a ground-ice so much the more certain of getting off with the first shift of the wind, and of being able to traverse the few miles that separated us from the open water at Behring's Straits, as whalers on several occasions had not left this region ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... on the water till midnight, and they did not like the appearance of the sky, which was by no means so blue as it had hitherto been. However, the want of bread did not much signify; they could make a shift with Miss Snubbleston's biscuits and poundcakes. But Uncle John did not come out on an excursion of pleasure to make shift; no more did Bagshaw; no more did any of the others. There was nothing else to be done; so where is Miss ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various

... was inherent in the strategical and geographical conditions. The English dispositions had taken every advantage of them, and the result was that not only was the Spanish army unable even to move, but the English advantages in the final battle were so great, that it was only a lucky shift of wind that saved the Armada from being driven to total destruction upon the ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett

... beside us. She had the thin suntanned face of her kind, brilliant eyes touched with khol, high cheek-bones, and the exceedingly short upper lip which gives such charm to the smile of the young nomad women. Her dress was the usual faded cotton shift, hooked on the shoulders with brass or silver clasps (still the antique fibulae), and wound about with a vague drapery in whose folds ...
— In Morocco • Edith Wharton

... guard, I cannot but lament my poor friend Colonel H. who must be undone by it. Ld M. [Marischal] thinks it too dangerous a tryall of that man's honour: for my part I shall not presume to give my own opinion, only beg of you once again that we may have time to shift for ourselves. I am obliged to you, Sir, for your most gracious Concern for my health; the doctors have advised me to take the air as much as my weakness will permit, are much against confinement, and would ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... first skirmish between the French and Austrians near Lisle, a general panic seized the former, and they retreated in disorder to Lisle, crying "Sauve qui peut, & nous fomnes (sic) trahis."—"Let every one shift for himself—we are betrayed." The General, after in vain endeavouring to rally them, was massacred at his return on the great square.—My pen faulters, and refuses to describe the barbarities committed on the lifeless hero. Let it suffice, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... in damasks, silks, and crapes, Equivocal in dress, half-belles, half-trapes: A length of night-gown rich Phantasia trails, Olinda wears one shift, and pares no nails: Some in C——l's Cabinet each act display, When nature in a transport dies away: Some more refin'd transcribe their Opera-loves On Iv'ry Tablets, or in clean white Gloves: Some ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte

... deceived into full security, eagerly pursued their pastime or their prey, and it was no difficult matter for the hidden archer to hit many a black duck, or teal, or whistlewing, as it floated securely on the placid water, or rose to shift its place a few yards up or down the stream. Soon the lake around was strewed with the feathered game, which Wolfe, cheered on by Louis who was stationed on ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill

... from the second, and shift the decimal point as many places to the left as there were zeros dropped in the process ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... must keep under cover all day and hide till night comes on. You can't have any fires. Get into sheltered spots and huddle together to keep warm, and shift round now and then to give every one a ...
— Ben Comee - A Tale of Rogers's Rangers, 1758-59 • M. J. (Michael Joseph) Canavan

... of the day the hard shift before dinner usually fell to the Boy. It was the worst time in the twenty-four hours, and equally dreaded by both men. It was only the first night out from Anvik, after an unusually trying day, the Boy was tramping heavily ahead, bent like ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... void by the death of Bishop Remigius) to his councellour Robert Bluet; but afterward repenting himselfe of such liberalitie, in that he had not kept it longer in his hands towards the inriching of his coffers, he deuised a shift how to wipe the bishops nose of some of his gold, which he performed after this maner. He caused the bishop to be sued, quarelinglie charging him that he had wrongfullie vsurped certeine possessions, togither with the citie of Lincolne, which appertained ...
— Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (2 of 6): England (2 of 12) - William Rufus • Raphael Holinshed

... abed, and watched to see if she waked; forsooth the witch's coming had waked her; but even so she was wary, and lay still, nor changed her breathing. So the witch turned away, but even therewith Birdalone made a shift to get a glimpse of her, and this she saw thereby, that the semblance of her was changed, and that she bore the self-same skin wherewith she had come to Utterhay, and which she had worn twice or thrice afterwards when she ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris

... gettin' lost in Brooklyn, or havin' his new straw lid blow under a truck and walkin' bareheaded a few blocks. Say, I'll bet he won't like it in Heaven if he can't punch a time card every mornin', or if they shift him around much ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford

... The caterers for the establishment were ordered to buy only spoilt provisions for food; fasting was prescribed for weeks together; and the miserable young women lay on boards a foot in breadth, with scarce any clothing. Their whole dress, when they went out, consisted of a shift and gown of coarsest hard blanket stuff. They were employed in educating young children. I once met a party of them walking out with their charges, who were chanting hymns and decorating these ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... first time the owner of a camera—imploring her to stand just like that because he wouldn't be half a minute only some rotten thing had stuck or something. Then the sharp click, the doubtful assurance of Freddie that he thought it was all right if he hadn't forgotten to shift the film (in which case she might expect to appear in combination with a cow which he had snapped on his way to the house), and the relieved disappearance of Pat, the terrier, who didn't understand photography. How many years ago had that been? She could not remember. But Freddie had grown ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... curbstone, and who at first had been supposed to be heading for Mrs. Pancoast's front steps some distance away, until the pair, turning sharply, had borne down upon the outside chairs with all sails set—(Miss Clendenning's skirts were of the widest)—a shift of canvas which sent every man to his feet with ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... trade relations with warring Europe and you see how hazardous a shift in old-time relations would be. To the fighting peoples and their colonies in normal times we send nearly seventy-eight per cent of our exports, and from them we derive seventy per cent of our exports. The Allies alone, principally England and her colonies, get sixty-three per cent ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson

... Tchehov's unity is that it is far more nakedly aesthetic than that of most of the great writers before him. Other writers of a rank equal to his—and there are not so very many—have felt the need to shift their angle of vision until they could perceive an all-embracing unity; but they were not satisfied with this. They felt, and obeyed, the further need of taking an attitude towards the unity they saw They approved or disapproved, accepted or rejected it. It would be perhaps more accurate ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... together and fill the streams to overflowing, the herd left the yard, glad to be free once more. The buck, shorn of his lordly headdress, craved solitude and wandered away by himself. Soon afterward the doe, too, disappeared, leaving the fawns to shift for themselves. Though lonely at first, they soon recovered their spirits and rejoiced in the freedom of the woods after the narrow confines of the yard, and in the abundance of food which appeared everywhere. Some weeks later the doe reappeared, accompanied ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... Dinosaurs with which its remains are found, and whose massive cuirass and weapons of defense are well matched with its teeth and claws. The momentum of its huge body involved a seemingly slow and lumbering action, an inertia of its movements, difficult to start and difficult to shift or to stop. Such movements are widely different from the agile swiftness which we naturally associate with a beast of prey. But an animal which exceeds an average elephant in bulk, no matter what its habits, is compelled by the ...
— Dinosaurs - With Special Reference to the American Museum Collections • William Diller Matthew

... for establishing values correctly, and determining what the eye sees scientifically, thereby making the production of art a mechanical certainty. Such a machine, I am told, was invented by an Englishman. Now if the praying-machine be admittedly the last shift of senile religion, the value-finding machine may fairly be taken for the psychopomp of art. Art has passed from the primitive creation of significant form to the highly civilised statement of scientific fact. I think the machine, which is the intelligent ...
— Art • Clive Bell

... is so annoying about one's garden and home meadows, its long tapering root clinging to the soil with such tenacity that I have pulled upon it till I could see stars without budging it; it has more lives than a cat, making a shift to live when pulled up and laid on top of the ground in the burning summer sun. Our native docks are mostly found in swamps, or near them, ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs

... not a woman's gift, To rain a shower of commanded tears, An onion will do well for such a shift, Which in a napkin, being close conveyed, Shall in despite ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor

... itself to be picked up; unless it happen to be drenched with rain; in which case, it will not stay quiet in one place. No doubt, the internal moisture of the animal congeals quickly with the cold (14) and causes it to shift its ground. Caught in that case it must needs be; but the hounds will have work enough to run the creature down. (15) The huntsman having seized the fawn, will hand it to the keeper. The bleating will continue; and the hind, ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... and half a dozen children, being, occasionally found in one; some of them are very small, belonging to poor old females who have lost their husbands, and whose families have separated themselves from them, and allow them to shift for themselves. During the day the men are generally busy at their several avocations, chinning the cost, that is, cutting the stick for skewers, making pegs for linen-lines, kipsimengring or basket-making, tinkering or braziering; the children ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow

... were protected by artillery, and strong reinforcements were coming up. The advanced guard was gradually falling back from Groveton; the rear brigades were hurrying forward up the road. The two Confederate batteries, overpowered by superior metal, had been compelled to shift position; only a section of Stuart's horse-artillery under Captain Pelham had come to their assistance, and the battle was confined to a frontal attack at the closest range. In many places the lines ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... take first shift on the gun on the first night, about 10 o'clock. We had to take a narrow path on the way, with Fritz sniping us every step; he had registered the path and it was a constant target for his machine guns and snipers. Our pet was well hidden in the hedge, with its ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... there was not time for many ceremonies—took the place of the poor weary one, and allowed himself to be chased by the dogs, while the other, who must soon have fallen a victim to the dogs, was left to shift as best he could, and try to ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... they get into trouble," he declared enigmatically. "An' I guess it ain't goin' to be 'emselves, neither. But when the p'lice get hot after 'em, why, they'll shift the scent—sure." ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... already sent you the continuation of my pupil's history, which, though it contains no events very uncommon, may be of use to young men who are in too much haste to trust their own prudence, and quit the wing of protection before they are able to shift ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson

... shore, as to render the carols of the birds plainly audible. This was not the worst. The third canoe had taken the same direction, and was slowly drifting towards a point where it must inevitably touch, unless turned aside by a shift of wind, or human hands. In other respects, nothing presented itself to attract attention, or to awaken alarm. The castle stood on its shoal, nearly abreast of the canoes, for the drift had amounted to miles in the course of the night, and the ark lay fastened to its piles, as both ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... of Beausejour there were no arms of war save such as Sir Lancelot had brought with him. Wherefore they made shift to fashion a harness out of kitchen gear, with a brazen platter for a breast-plate, and the cover of the greatest of all kettles for a shield, and for a helmet a round pot of iron, whereof the handle stuck down at Martimor's back like a tail. And for spear he got him a stout young ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... ME, now, who knows but I might in time have risen to be a Prebendary or even a Dean? 'They that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree,' Paul wrote to Timothy once; but it's not so now, it's not so now; preferment goes by favour, and the deacon must e'en shift as best he can on his own account.' So, in the end, Arthur packed up his surplice in his little handbag, and took his way ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... are full of soldiers. [Casts his eye round. And in the council-house, too, I observe, You're settled quite at home! Well, well! we soldiers Must shift and suit us in what way ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... radical in the direction of Democracy; two wholly new Republics added to the list, one being China, the oldest and most populous country in the world, the other little Portugal, long accounted the most spiritless and unprogressive nation in Europe; a shift from autocratic British rule toward democratic home rule through all the vast region of South Africa; a similar shift in much-troubled Ireland; Socialism reaching out toward power through all central Europe; Woman Suffrage taking possession ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... the large sum of money that was realized at the sale, as well as that which Slator had so very meanly obtained from their poor mother. They then dragged him into the woods, tied him to a tree, and left the inebriated robber to shift for himself, while they made good their escape to Savannah. The fugitives being white, of course no one ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... I the middling mighty To have a mark of waves' flame; Giver of grey seas? glitter, This gift shalt thou make shift with. If the elf sun of the waters From out of purse thou lettest, O waster of the worm's bedy Awaits thee ...
— The Story Of Gunnlaug The Worm-Tongue And Raven The Skald - 1875 • Anonymous

... with the senior New York Senator; but one position he avowedly maintained. It was that he was not to blame for being President of the United States; that he had taken the oath of office, and was the man responsible to the people for the administration, and he could not, dare not, shift that obligation; and, more than that, he must give the "recognition" due friends to the men who had aided him in breaking down Mr. Conkling's policy at Chicago. If that was a crime he was a criminal. He was President, and he would be true to his friends; ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various

... astonished to learn that he had nearly three hundred pounds in the bank. But this man had travelled over most of the world, and enjoyed wonderful opportunities on some American railroad, with two dollars a shift and double pay on Sunday and at night; whereas my fellow-passenger had never quitted Tyneside, and had made all that he possessed in that same accursed, down-falling England, whence skilled mechanics, engineers, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... could travel faster than light because mass increased with speed, and mass increased with speed—obviously!—because ships remained in the same time-slot, and ships remained in the same time-slot long after a one-second shift was possible because nobody realized that it meant traveling faster than light. And even before there was interstellar travel, there was practically no interplanetary commerce because it took so much fuel to take off and land. And it took more fuel to carry the fuel to take off ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... secrets of tillage. They grew clover and "artificial grasses"—such as rye—for their cattle, cultivated turnips for winter fodder, tilled the soil more thoroughly, used fertilizers more diligently, and even learned how to shift their crops from field to field according to a regular plan, so that the soil would not lose its fertility and would not have to be left idle or "fallow" every ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... desertion, mother marrying a second time, cruelty from the step-father, beating, starving, and final abandonment. He did not know what had become of them; they had gone away to avoid paying their rent, and left this boy to shift for himself. "How long ago is that?" said Mr. Frost. "Before snow," said the lad,—the snow has been gone a fortnight and more from this neighborhood, and for all that time the child, by his own account, has wandered up and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... hear such a hideous clamor of contradictory tongues! ... all striving to explain what defies explanation, namely, Khosrul's flight, for which, after all, no one is to blame so much as Zephoranim himself,—but 'tis the privilege of monarchs to shift their own mistakes and follies on to the shoulders of their subjects! Come! Lysia awaits us, and will not easily pardon our tardy obedience to her summons,—let us hence ere the ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... who, as their memories supply them with an entire and full view of things, begin their narrative so far back, and crowd it with so many impertinent circumstances, that though the story be good in itself, they make a shift to spoil it; and if otherwise, you are either to curse the strength of their memory or the weakness of their judgment: and it is a hard thing to close up a discourse, and to cut it short, when you have once started; there is nothing wherein the force of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... peat was employed in 1860, to replace a portion of the fir wood charcoal, which had been used for smelting an impure clay-iron-stone: the latter fuel having become so dear, that peat was resorted to as a make shift. Instead of one "sack," or 33 cubic feet of charcoal, 24 cubic feet of charcoal and 15 cubic feet of peat were employed in each charge, and the quantity of ore had to be diminished thereby, so that the yield of pig was reduced, on the average, by about 17 per cent. In this case ...
— Peat and its Uses as Fertilizer and Fuel • Samuel William Johnson

... of a shock, such a quick shift as that. I ain't got a glimmer as to what Aunt Laura's end of the game was; but so long as the home-made pastry holds out I was as good as nailed to the spot. She seems to get a heap of satisfaction watchin' me eat, almost as ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... asses? You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours. Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass. One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table: 'Es tu dignus?' answered, 'No, my Lord, but I shall dine ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... Surely the distinction between subjective I and objective me, between subjective he and objective him, and correspondingly for other personal pronouns, belongs to the very core of the language. We can throw whom to the dogs, somehow make shift to do without an its, but to level I and me to a single case—would that not be to un-English our language beyond recognition? There is no drift toward such horrors as Me see him or I see he. True, the phonetic disparity between I ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... away; you seem to have forgotten nothing, and I am sure that Father will be most grateful to you," she said, looking at him with so much trust and affection in her eyes that his conscience pricked him dreadfully for what he knew to be his selfish eagerness to shift a heavy burden on to the ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... evident that Mr. Herbert Watrous did not mean to spoil his aim by haste. Shutting one eye, he squinted carefully through his sights, lowering or raising the stock or barrel so as to shift the aim, until at last he had it elevated and ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... the years he had spent there trundling the heavy cars of ore in and out of the tunnel under the direction of his father. For thirteen days of each fortnight his father was a steady, hard-working shift-boss of the mine. Every other Sunday he became an irresponsible animal, a beast, a brute, crazy ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and should for the future be empowered to adjudicate without appeal on the life and property of the burgesses, to deal at his pleasure with the state-domains, to shift at discretion the boundaries of Rome, of Italy, and of the state, to dissolve or establish urban communities in Italy, to dispose of the provinces and dependent states, to confer the supreme -imperium- instead of the people and to nominate proconsuls and propraetors, and lastly ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... itself on the field of battle disappeared in the general conduct of the campaign where the qualities of the chief alone told. The battle of February 17th ended with a shift of wind to the southeast at six P.M., after two hours action. The English were thus brought to windward, and their van ships enabled to share in the fight. Night falling, Suffren, at half-past six, hauled his squadron by the wind on the starboard tack, heading northeast, while ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan

... panted at the windlass, he has loaded in the drift, He has pounded at the face of oozy clay; He has taxed himself to sickness, dark and damp and double shift, He has labored like a demon night and day. And now, praise God, it's over, and he seems to breathe again Of new-mown hay, the warm, wet, friendly loam; He sees a snowy orchard in a green and dimpling plain, And a little vine-clad ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service

... carbines to insure regularity of the musketry. He had the humbler yet even more necessary equipment for military success. He could forage his troops in barren opportunities; they somehow kept clothed and armed at the minimum of expense. Did he lack ammunition—he made shift to capture a supply for his little Par-rott guns that barked like fierce dogs at the rear-guard of an enemy or protected his own retreat when it jumped with his plans to compass a speedy withdrawal himself. ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... to a halt, standing there in the tunnel, beside the running water. They had nearly reached the other end of the flume, and could dimly see, ahead of them, a faint glow, which told of daylight to come. Bud, who was carrying the lantern, made shift to hide it behind the bodies of himself and his cousins, so that the unknown, approaching, might not have them at a disadvantage, he being ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... brush contact surface. c. Loose brushes. d. Brushes bearing on wrong point of commutator (to set brushes properly, remove all outside connections from generator, open the shunt field circuit, and apply a battery across the main brushes. Shift the brushes until the armature does not tend to rotate in either direction. This is, of course, a test which must be made with the generator on the test bench). e. Loose connections in ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte

... soon after crossing this prairie. We took the horse out of the shafts and tied him to the wagon. My friend Bennet, though au fait on these trips, failed to strike a fire. We ate something, and made shift ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft

... took advantage of Aunt Mildred's state of weakness, and worried and coaxed her into making this unjust codicil. All in his favour, of course; I don't believe poor aunt knew what she was doing. And we shall have to shift for ourselves now. I hope he will enjoy his unrighteous possessions. I—I ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... where any ford existed afterwards became a ferry. Lambeth Bridge spans the river at one such place, the memory of which is now maintained in the name of the Horseferry Road. The largest of these islets was once called Thorney, i.e. the Isle of Thorns. If you will take a map of Westminster, shift the bank of the river so as to make it flow along Abingdon Street, draw a stream running down College Street into the Thames; another running into the Thames across King Street, and draw a ditch or moat connecting the two streams along Delahaye Street and ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... marked the turning point in the popular mind with regard to usury. As it was approved in their necessity by the king and queen at the head of the Protestant world, ecclesiastics began to shift their ground and to apologize for, and excuse, that which had been formerly unequivocably condemned. As the crown was the head of both the church and the state, the condemnation of usury seemed tinged both with disloyalty and heresy. The courts ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott

... Somewhat comparable to the shift in the center of power from one federal authority to another, was the change which took place in the relative strength of the state and national governments. This transfer was most clearly seen in the decisions of the Supreme Court in cases ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... Gordon made his first arrest. It was near the end of his shift, just as darkness was falling and the few lights were going on. He turned a corner and came to a short, heavy hoodlum backing out of a small liquor store with a knife in throwing position. The crook grunted ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... began—for this time the crowd was too great to permit it in the house, in spite of the spacious rooms. Molly and Sylvia took turns in playing, and each found several eager partners waiting for her, every time the "shift" occurred. Finally, about midnight, the bride went upstairs to change her dress, and the girls gathered around the banisters to be ready to catch the bouquet when she came down, laughing and teasing each other while they waited. Great ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... County Mayo; he was hunted up from the country of the brothons' (thick bed-coverings, then made in Mayo) 'without any for the night, nor any shift for bedding, but with an old yellow blanket with a thousand patches; he had a black trouser down to the ground with two hundred holes and forty pieces; he had long legs like the shank of a pipe, and a long great coat, for it is many the dab he put in his pocket. His ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others

... places, in the history of the world. Among its accompaniments will be generally found some sort of literary record of sentiments and imaginations; but to find an heroic literature of the highest order is not so easy. Many nations instead of an Iliad or an Odyssey have had to make shift with conventional repetitions of the praise of chieftains, without any story; many have had to accept from their story-tellers all sorts of monstrous adventures in place of the humanities of debate and argument. Epic literature is not common; it is brought to perfection by a slow process ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... useless, Jimmy Bourke," said he, "to be hauling of the same poor log from skidway to skidway. You can shift her to every travoy trail in th' Crother tract, but it will do ye little good. I'll cull it wherever I find it, and never will ye get th' scale of ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White

... world to be definite is to know our goal and then strive to attain it. In the lack of definite standards based upon the lessons of the past, our dominant national ideals shift with every shifting wind of public sentiment and popular demand. Are we satisfied with the individualistic and self-centered idealism that has come with our material prosperity and which to-day shames the memory of the men who founded our Republic? Are we negligent of ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley

... of plates that are riveted to the frames, and make the outside skin of every steamer, echoed the call, for each plate wanted to shift and creep a little, and each plate, according to its position, complained against ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... with the same result, the enemy's doubt as to the situation of the gun being deepened by the simultaneous practice of two 15-prs. fired from the plain below the kop. A few days later Butcher succeeded in getting a second gun up the hill, and by means of his great command, forced the Boers to shift every laager into sheltered kloofs, and caused ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice

... the shift from Bonn to Berlin will take place over a period of years with Bonn retaining many ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... violent actions in a strong psi field—a field made especially to act on violence. When you first try it you get something like eddy currents. Warnings. It can be arranged that such psi eddy currents make your eyelids twitch. Keep it up, and probability changes to shift the most-likely consequences of the violence. This is like a spinning copper disk getting hot. Then, if you're obstinate about it, you get the equivalent of the copper disk melting. Probability gets so drastically changed that the violent ...
— The Ambulance Made Two Trips • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... sacrifice they had officiated, O Bharata, thus dead of starvation, began to cook the body in a vessel, impelled by the pangs of hunger. All food having disappeared from the world of men, those ascetics, desirous of saving their lives, had recourse, for purposes of sustenance, to such a miserable shift. While they were thus employed. Vrishadarbha's son, viz., king Saivya, in course of his roving, came upon those Rishis. Indeed, he met them on his way, engaged in cooking the dead body, impelled ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Abney carried him out in her coach to Newington; how soon his wrist-bands got soiled in the smoke of London, and how his horse had fallen into Mr. Coward's well at Walthamstow; and how he had gone a fishing "with extraordinary success, for he had pulled a minnow out of the water, though it made shift to get away." They also contain sundry consultations and references on the subject of fans and damasks, white and blue. And from one of them we are comforted to find that the Northampton carrier was conveying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various



Words linked to "Shift" :   shunt, replace, red shift, substitute, tin pest, movement, duty period, chemise, pyrolysis, spell, fissure, wobble, change over, workforce, frock, transition, beat down, jump, shifter, crack, bunker, carry over, modification, night shift, tilt, displace, improvement, tin disease, shoulder strap, stir, diphthongise, remove, tin plague, retrogression, luxation, scissure, faulting, shifting, workday, budge, gang, dislodge, exchange, San Andreas Fault, geological fault, population shift, strike-slip fault, shuffle, evening shift, strap, shift register, turn, unmentionable, slip, transfer, channel-surf, hours, working day, transplant, undergarment, break, motion, key, fault line, sea change, inclined fault, displacement, teddy, cut, degeneration, go, cleft, hands, leap, transship, swing shift



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