shuffle

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Contents

English [edit]

Pronunciation [edit]

Noun [edit]

shuffle (plural shuffles)

  1. The act of shuffling cards.
    He made a real mess of the last shuffle.
  2. An instance of walking without lifting one's feet.
    The sad young girl left with a tired shuffle.
  3. (by extension, music) A rhythm commonly used in blues music. Consists of a series of triplet notes with the middle note missing, so that it sounds like a long note followed by a short note. Sounds like a walker dragging one foot.
  4. A trick; an artifice; an evasion.
    The gifts of nature are beyond all shame and shuffles. — L'Estrange.

Quotations [edit]

  • 1995 Mel Kernahan, White savages in the South Seas, Verso, p113
    As I lay there listening to the strange night sounds, I hear the shuffle of someone creeping by outside in the grass.
  • 2003 Edmund G. Bansak & Robert Wise, Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career, McFarland, p394
    She has a crippled leg, and every time she walks we hear the shuffle of her crinoline skirt and the thumping of her cane.
  • 2008 Markus Zusak, The Book Thief, Pan Macmillan Australia, p148
    Around her, she could hear the shuffle of her own hands, disturbing the shelves.

Translations [edit]

act of shuffling cards

Derived terms [edit]

Verb [edit]

shuffle (third-person singular simple present shuffles, present participle shuffling, simple past and past participle shuffled)

  1. To put in a random order.
    Don't forget to shuffle the cards.
    You shuffle, I'll deal.
    The data packets are shuffled before transmission.
    I'm going to shuffle all the songs in my playlist.
  2. To walk or dance without picking up one's feet
    He shuffled out of the room.
    I shuffled my feet across the rug.
    • 1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 4, The Subtle Minotaur[1]:
      The band played ceaselessly. Even when the other instruments were resting the pianist kept up his monotonous vamping, with a dreary furbelow for embellishment here and there, to which some few of the dancers continued to shuffle round the floor.
  3. To change; modify the order of something.
    • 2010 December 28, Marc Vesty, “Stoke 0 - 2 Fulham”, BBC:
      But, rather than make a change up front, Hughes shuffled his defence for this match, replacing Carlos Salcido with Baird, in a move which few would have predicted would prove decisive.

Synonyms [edit]

  • (walk without picking up one's feet): shamble

Derived terms [edit]

Translations [edit]

to put in a random order
to walk without picking up one's feet
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