| 释义 |
▪ I. shifting, vbl. n.|ˈʃɪftɪŋ|
[f. shift v. + -ing1. Cf. ON. skipting division, change.]
†1. Used for: A ‘course’ of the Jewish priesthood. Obs.
c1200Ormin 467 He wass i þatt shifftinng sett þatt nemmnedd wass Abya [cf. Vulgate: de vice Abia].
2. The action of the verb shift in various senses.
a. Changing, moving.
c1440Promp. Parv. 446/1 Schyftynge, or chaungynge, mutacio, commutacio, permutacio. Schyftynge, or removynge, amocio. 1579Spenser Sheph. Cal. Dec. 116, I..woont to frame my pype, Vnto the shifting of the shepheards foote. 1611Hobbes tr. Thucyd. (1822) 8 After the Trojan war the Grecians continued still their shiftings and transplantations. 1691T. H[ale] Acc. New Invent. p. lxii, The strange shifting of Tides in this River. 1711Lond. Gaz. No. 4819/2 The sudden..Shiftings of the Weather. 1780Burke Sp. Bristol Wks. III. 374 Of no use but to indicate the shiftings of every fashionable gale. 1837Carlyle Fr. Rev. II. i. ii, As in some sudden shifting of the Earth's axis. 1885Baggallay in Law Rep. 29 Chanc. Div. 439 The shifting of the capital of Italy from Florence to Rome. 1901‘Linesman’ Words by Eyewitness vii. (1902) 155 With their sidelong glances and uneasy shiftings.
with advs.
1562[Bp. Cooper] Answ. Def. Truth iii. 18 b, It weare but the shiftinge backe of one winge of the battayle. 1575–85Abp. Sandys Serm. xii. 197 Delatories and shiftings off weare out many a iust cause. 1834–6P. Barlow Manuf. in Encycl. Metrop. (1845) VIII. 736/1 The shifting back of the heddles.
b. The action or practice of devising expedients, or of using evasions; a device, expedient; an evasion, shift. Often in pl. ? Obs. or dial.
1559W. Bercher Nobil. Women (Roxb. 1904) 124/2 Ye cannot, for all your shyftinge, denye but man hath the better case. 1616Rick Cabinet 137 b, Shifting is a very poore and troublesome trade, if a man haue no other meanes, to get his liuing. 1691Hartcliffe Virtues 177 Men of brave Spirits..have made no scruple to use these shiftings to save themselves or their Friends.
c. Boxing and Fencing. (See quots.)
1793Sporting Mag. I. 198/2 Shifting is running from your adversary, whenever he attempts to strike you, or to come near you, or when you have struck him, and is done with a view of tiring him out. c1800Mod. Art Boxing 31 Shifting, running from your adversary whenever he attempts to hit you, or to come near you, or when you have struck him. 1821Egan Boxiana (1830) I. 98 Tom, finding he was over-matched, was obliged..to have recourse to shifting to prevent his being beat straight forward. 1828Encycl. Metrop. (1845) XIX. 85/1 (Fencing), Caveating, changing, Disengaging, or Shifting, slipping off your adversary's blade to the opposite side, when you feel him endeavouring to Bind your own.
d. Ship-building: (see quots.). Cf. shift v. 8 e and n. 16.
1805Shipwright's Vade-M. 131 Shifting, the art of setting off the length of the planks of the bottom, topside, &c. that the butts may over-run each other, in order to make a good shift. Replacing old stuff with new is also called shifting. 1830Hedderwick Mar. Archit. 272 The first futtock requires to be very long, to make a proper shifting past the floor-head, and extend down to the side of the keel.
e. Philol. The process of regular phonological change. Cf. shift n. 14 d. See also sound-shifting s.v. sound n.3
1888J. Wright Old High-German Primer vi. 27 The most striking feature in which High German differs from the other West Germanic languages is the general shifting which certain consonants underwent. 1905O. F. Emerson Hist. Eng. Lang. 238 There has been no consistent shifting of a considerable number of consonants as in High German. 1938Language XIV. 112 (heading) Phonological shifting in American Norwegian. 1954F. G. Cassidy in Robertson & Cassidy Devel. Mod. Eng. v. 100 Note that though some shifting begins before Chaucer's day, the shift as a whole is subsequent.
†3. concr. A change of clothes. Obs. rare—1.
1631Gouge God's Arrows iii. §88. 349 Plagues oft arise..from noisome savours, from want of cleane shiftings, from unwholsome food.
4. Comb.: shifting-boards (see quot. 1846); shifting clothes, trousers dial., clothes, trousers, into which a person changes, esp. after work; † shifting day, the day for changing one's clothes or undergarments; shifting-movement Organ-building (see quot.); † shifting-room, an actor's dressing-room.
1833Poe in Southern Lit. Messenger (1835) Dec. 35/2, I therefore thought proper to contrive a hiding-place in the hold. This I did by removing a small portion of the *shifting boards. 1846A. Young Naut. Dict., Shifting-boards, one or more wooden partitions put up fore-and-aft in a vessel's hold..for the purpose of preventing the shifting of a cargo.
1885F. Gordon Pyotshaw 51 Ma guid *shiftin' claes clean spilt. 1957Scotland's Mag. June 46 The first of the noisy band of workers came ‘skailing’ out of the pithead baths, in their shifting clothes.
1697Vanbrugh Relapse iii. iii, And if it was not *shifting Day, let her put on a clean Tucker, quick!
1876J. Hiles Catech. Organ viii. (1878) 56 A *shifting-movement is an old contrivance for shutting off the loud stops [of an organ] by means of a pedal: it..is now superseded by the composition pedals.
1740Cibber Apol. (1756) I. 272, I haul'd him by the sleeve into my *shifting-room.
1913D. H. Lawrence Sons & Lovers viii. 199 She wiped him in a desultory fashion, and went upstairs, returning immediately with his *shifting-trousers. When he was dried he struggled into his shirt.
▪ II. shifting, ppl. a.|ˈʃɪftɪŋ|
[f. shift v. + -ing2.]
1. a. That shifts or changes position or direction.
1479Office Mayor Bristol in Eng. Gilds (1870) 425 The shyftyng daies of the woke, specially the Wensdaies and Satirdaies, the Maire hath be vsid to walke in the morenynges to the Brewers howses. 1644Milton Divorce (ed. 2) To Parl. A 4 b, Let him bethink him withall how he will soder up the shifting flaws of his ungirt permissions, his venial and unvenial dispences. 1735Somerville Chase iv. 70 Nor less the shifting Cur avoid, that breaks Illusive from the Pack. 1791Burke Let. Memb. Nat. Assembly Wks. VI. 12 The shifting tides of fear and hope. 1814Scott Diary 31 July in Lockhart (1837) III. iv. 140 A whole parish was swallowed up by the shifting sands. 1859Gen. P. Thompson Audi Alt. II. App. 99 In a shifting gale the seaman will do many things, which are the last he would have done an hour before. 1871Freeman Hist. Ess. Ser. i. viii. 239 The shifting relations between France and Normandy during the tenth and eleventh centuries.
b. Special collocations: shifting agriculture = shifting cultivation; shifting backstays, ballast (see quots.); shifting bar Printing, ‘a cross-bar removably dovetailed into a chase’ (Knight Dict. Mech. 1875); shifting centre = metacentre; shifting cultivation, any of several forms of agriculture in which an area of ground is cleared of vegetation and cultivated for a (usu. small) number of years and then abandoned because of nomadic habits or deliberate fallowing or because the yield of crop has become uneconomic, when cultivation is begun elsewhere; hence shifting cultivator; shifting keyboard Pianoforte, a keyboard action of a grand piano, etc., which is moved by the use of the soft pedal; so shifting pedal; shifting spanner, an adjustable spanner; shifting use Law, a use properly created for the benefit of one person, but so as to pass from him upon a specified contingency and vest wholly or in part in another.
1934W. Fitzgerald Africa iii. v. 354 Cocoa-planting necessitated the abandonment of the old system of *shifting agriculture. 1973W. T. W. Morgan E. Africa iv. 92 In the general absence of fertilisers and lacking any complete rotation system, a system of fallowing was necessary. In the tropics this system has come to be referred to as ‘shifting agriculture’.
1867Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., *Shifting backstays,..those which can be changed from one side of a shift to the other, as the occasion demands.
1785Grose Dict. Vulgar T., *Shifting Ballast, a term used by sailors, to signify soldiers, passengers, or any landsmen on board. 1867Smyth Sailor's Word-bk., Shifting ballast, pigs of iron, bags of sand, &c., used for ballast, and capable of being moved to trim the vessel. Also, a term applied to messengers, soldiers, and live-stock. 1794*Shifting-centre [see metacentre]. 1846A. Young Naut. Dict. 211 Meta-centre, sometimes called the Shifting Centre.
1922*Shifting cultivation [see chena]. 1952P. W. Richards Tropical Rain Forest xvii. 378 The destruction of the primary forest which gives rise to secondary successions may take place in different ways and for various reasons. By far the most important cause of destruction up to the present has been the system of shifting cultivation (the ladang system of Malaysia and the taunggya system of Burma) which is practised by nearly all the native peoples of the tropics. 1971J. H. Galloway in Blakemore & Smith Latin America viii. 382 Much of the agriculture of Mato Grosso and Goiás is still primitive, unproductive shifting cultivation.
1945K. J. Pelzar Pioneer Settlement in Asiatic Tropics ii. 16 The *shifting cultivator does not use the same piece of land every year; instead, he kills or cuts down at regular intervals—every year, every other year, or every third year—the trees of a small forest patch. 1979Nature 16 Aug. 533/1 Shifting cultivators fell and burn forest land, then plant food crops and raise animals and later move on when soil fertility drops.
1896A. J. Hipkins Pianoforte 40 In many upright pianos, however, although some are made with *shifting keyboards..a soft pedal is contrived by mechanically dropping a strip of cloth..between the hammers and the strings. 1922A. H. Lindo Pedalling in Pianoforte Music ii. x. 143 The mechanism of the shifting keyboard, which is fitted to many Uprights and to nearly all Grands, is preferable.
1880Grove Dict. Mus. II. 682/2 The *shifting pedal, first introduced by Stein in his Saitenharmonica. 1962K. Dale tr. Riefling's Piano Pedalling 28 As regards the grand piano at any rate, it is correct to speak of the shifting pedal (Verschiebung) because the whole mechanism, keyboard and hammer, is shifted slightly to the right when the left pedal is pressed down.
1829Mechanics' Mag. 31 Jan. 423/2, I send you..a plan of a new *shifting-spanner, which answers better than the wedge-spanner. 1935J. Guthrie Little Country ii. 38 I'll let you have my shifting spanner.
1765Blackstone Comm. II. 335 This is sometimes called a secondary, sometimes a *shifting, use. 1844J. Williams Real Prop. (1877) 293 The establishment of shifting and contingent uses occasioned great difficulties to the early lawyers.
2. That uses shifts, tricks, deceit, expedients, subterfuges, or evasions.
1581A. Hall Iliad i. 7 Among the Kings a coward vile, a slouthful shifting Oxe. 1587Harrison England ii. xi. 186/1 Yoong shifting gentlemen, which oftentimes doo beare more port than they are able to mainteine. 1659Milton Civ. Power 54 Opposing truth to error, no unequal match; truth the strong to error the weak though slie and shifting. 1737Gentl. Mag. VII. 570/1 Nor winged flight, nor shifting wiles, Cou'd save 'em from his deadly toils. 1795Windham Sp. 5 Jan. (1812) I. 261 What course of candour and fair reasoning is a match for this shifting subtlety?
Hence ˈshiftingly adv., ˈshiftingness.
1573Tusser Husb. (1878) 17 To hate to liue in infamie, through craft, and liuing shiftingly. 1613E. Hoby Counter-sn. Ishmael Rabshacheh 14 Thus doth he..thinke shiftingly to hide that, which he dares not doctrinally defend. 1624Gataker Transubst. 109 And this is..when they speake mystically or shiftingly, as hee speaketh. 1866Spectator 8 Dec. 1353 The wonderful variety and shiftingness of the grounds taken by their advocates. |