No; without a gown, in a shift that was somewhat of the coarsest, and none of the cleanest, bedewed likewise with some odoriferous effluvia, the produce of the day's labour, with a pitchfork in her hand, Molly Seagrim approached.
1762, Charles Johnstone, The Reverie; or, A Flight to the Paradise of Fools[1], volume 2, Dublin: Printed by Dillon Chamberlaine, OCLC519072825, page 202:
At length, one night, when the company by some accident broke up much sooner than ordinary, so that the candles were not half burnt out, she was not able to resist the temptation, but resolved to have them some way or other. Accordingly, as soon as the hurry was over, and the servants, as she thought, all gone to sleep, she stole out of her bed, and went down stairs, naked to her shift as she was, with a design to steal them […]
My going to Oxford was not merely for shift of air.
There was a shift in the political atmosphere.
2012 November 7, Matt Bai, “Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds”, in New York Times[2]:
The generational shift Mr. Obama once embodied is, in fact, well under way, but it will not change Washington as quickly — or as harmoniously — as a lot of voters once hoped.
(genetics) A mutation in which the DNA or RNA from two different sources (such as viruses or bacteria) combine.
2017, Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World, →ISBN:
This kind of change, called shift - or more memorably, 'viral sex' - tends to trigger a pandemic, because a radically different virus demands a radically different immune response, and that takes time to mobilise.
But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.
(transitive) To move from one place to another; to redistribute.
We'll have to shift these boxes to the downtown office.
The ability to shift profits to low-tax countries by locating intellectual property in them, which is then licensed to related businesses in high-tax countries, is often assumed to be the preserve of high-tech companies. […] current tax rules make it easy for all sorts of firms to generate […] “stateless income”: profit subject to tax in a jurisdiction that is neither the location of the factors of production that generate the income nor where the parent firm is domiciled.
As it were, to ride day and night; and […] not to have patience to shift me.
1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy, Oxford: Printed by Iohn Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, OCLC216894069; The Anatomy of Melancholy, 2nd corrected and augmented edition, Oxford: Printed by John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, 1624, OCLC54573970, (please specify |partition=1, 2, or 3):
, II.ii.2:
'Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linen about him, to be decently and comely attired […].
(obsolete) To resort to expedients for accomplishing a purpose; to contrive; to manage.
1692, Roger L’Estrange, Fables of Æsop and Other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions, London: R. Sare et al., Fable 83, Reflexion, p. 81,[4]
[…] men in distress will look to themselves in the First Place, and leave their Companions to Shift as well as they can.
1743, Robert Drury, The Pleasant, and Surprizing Adventures of Mr. Robert Drury, during his Fifteen Years Captivity on the Island of Madagascar, London, p. 112,[5]
My Fellow-Slaves were […] as courteous to me as I could well-expect; and as they had Plantations of their own, they gave me […] such Victuals as they had; especially on dark Nights, and at such Times as I could not shift for myself.
To practice indirect or evasive methods.
1614, Walter Raleigh, History of the World, London: Walter Burre, Part 1, Chapter 3, Section 7, p. 45,[6]
But this I dare auow of all those Schoole-men, that though they were exceeding wittie, yet they better teach all their Followers to shift, then to resolue, by their distinctions.