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Crew vs Shift - What's the difference?

crew | shift | Related terms |

As nouns the difference between crew and shift

is that crew is a group of people (often staff) manning and operating a large facility or piece of equipment such as a factory, ship, boat, or airplane while shift is a type of women's undergarment, a slip.

As verbs the difference between crew and shift

is that crew is to be a member of a vessel's crew while shift is to change, swap.

crew

English

Etymology 1

from (etyl), from (etyl)

Noun

(en noun)
  • A group of people (often staff) manning and operating a large facility or piece of equipment such as a factory, ship, boat, or airplane
  • If you need help, please contact a member of the crew .
    The crews of the two ships got into a fight.
  • A member of the crew of a vessel or plant
  • One crew died in the accident.
  • (obsolete) Any company of people; an assemblage; a throng.
  • * Spenser
  • There a noble crew / Of lords and ladies stood on every side.
  • * Milton
  • Faithful to whom? to thy rebellious crew ?
  • A member of a ship's company who is not an officer
  • The officers and crew assembled on the deck.
    ''There are quarters for three officers and five crew .
  • (arts) The group of workers on a dramatic production who are not part of the cast
  • There are a lot of carpenters in the crew !
    The crews for different movies would all come down to the bar at night.
  • A worker on a dramatic production who is not part of the cast
  • There were three actors and six crew on the set.
  • A group of people working together on a task
  • The crews competed to cut the most timber.
  • A close group of friends
  • I'd look out for that whole crew down at Jack's.
  • A set of individuals lumped together by the speaker
  • * 1861 William Weston Patton, (version of) John Brown's Body
  • He captured Harper’s Ferry, with his nineteen men so few,
    And frightened "Old Virginny" till she trembled thru and thru;
    They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew ,
    But his soul is marching on.
  • * {{quote-book, 1950, Bernard Nicholas Schilling, Conservative England and the Case Against Voltaire, page=266 citation
  • , passage=Malignant principles bear fruit in kind and the Revolution did no more than practice what men had been taught by the abandoned crew of philosophers. }}
  • (slang, hip-hop) A hip-hop group
  • * {{quote-book, 2003, Jennifer Guglielmo & Salvatore Salerno, Are Italians White?, page=150 citation
  • , passage=We decided we needed another rapper in the crew and spent months looking.}}
  • (sports, rowing, uncountable) The sport of competitive rowing.
  • * {{quote-book, 1989, & Mary Morgan, Spock on Spock citation
  • , passage=Two Andover classmates, Al Wilson and Al Lindley, both went out for crew in our freshman year at Yale.}}
  • (rowing) A rowing team manning a single shell.
  • * {{quote-book, 1888, , Boating citation
  • , passage=If a crew feather much under water, it is a good plan to seat them in a row on a bench, and give each man a stick to handle as an oar.}} Image:STS-87_crew_1.jpg, Crew of a spaceship Image:Toronto female rowing team.jpg, Crew of a rowing shell Image:ScottKalittaDragsterPits.jpg, Crew working on a race car Image:Daara J.jpg, A hip-hop crew
    Synonyms
    * (group manning a vessel) ship's company, all hands, complement * (member of a crew) crewer, member; nautical only : sailor, seaman * (non-officer ship worker) seaman * (non-cast dramatic personnel) staff, stagehand * (group engaged in a task) team, gang * (social group) clique, gang, pack, crowd, bunch, lot (UK); posse * (group lumped together) crowd, flock, lot, gang * (hip-hop group) posse, band, group
    Derived terms
    * crew cut * crewless * crewman * crew mate * ground crew/groundcrew * motley crew * skeleton crew

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To be a member of a vessel's crew
  • We crewed together on a fishing boat last year.
    The ship was crewed by fifty sailors.
  • To be a member of a work or production crew
  • The film was crewed and directed by students.
  • To supply workers or sailors for a crew
  • * {{quote-book, 2003, Kirk C. Jenkins, The Battle Rages Higher, isbn=0813122813, page=42 citation
  • , passage= Steele crewed the boat with men from his own regiment and volunteers from John Wood's detachment.}}
  • (nautical) To do the proper work of a sailor
  • The crewing of the vessel before the crash was deficient.
  • (nautical) To take on, recruit (new) crew
  • * {{quote-news, 1967, January, , Tampa, The Pilot, page=30 citation
  • , passage=The two ships will be crewing in the latter half of September.}}
    Derived terms
    * crewer * uncrewed * crew up

    Etymology 2

    Verb

    (head)
  • (British) (crow) To have made the characteristic sound of a rooster.
  • It was still dark when the cock crew .

    Etymology 3

    Probably of (etyl) origin.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (British, dialectal) A pen for livestock such as chickens or pigs
  • * {{quote-book, 2004, , On the Edge, page=7 citation
  • , passage=Between the shippon and the pig-crew , with the wind blowing over from the vegetable ground.}}

    Etymology 4

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • The Manx shearwater.
  • (Webster 1913)

    See also

    * *

    shift

    English

    (wikipedia shift)

    Verb

    (en verb)
  • To change, swap.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2012-03, author=William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter
  • , volume=100, issue=2, page=87, magazine=(American Scientist) , title= The British Longitude Act Reconsidered , passage=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.}}
  • To move from one place to another; to redistribute.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-22, volume=407, issue=8841, page=68, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= T time , passage=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.}}
  • To change position.
  • (obsolete) To change (one's clothes); also to change (someone's) underclothes.
  • *, 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 […].
  • * Shakespeare
  • As it were to ride day and night; andnot to have patience to shift me.
  • To change gears (in a car).
  • (typewriters) To move the keys of a typewriter over in order to type capital letters and special characters.
  • (computer keyboards) To switch to a character entry mode for capital letters and special characters.
  • (computing) To manipulate a binary number by moving all of its digits left or right; compare rotate.
  • (computing) To remove the first value from an array.
  • To dispose of.
  • To hurry.
  • (Ireland, vulgar, slang) To engage in sexual petting.
  • To resort to expedients for accomplishing a purpose; to contrive; to manage.
  • * L'Estrange
  • Men in distress will look to themselves, and leave their companions to shift as well as they can.
  • To practice indirect or evasive methods.
  • * Sir Walter Raleigh
  • All those schoolmen, though they were exceeding witty, yet better teach all their followers to shift , than to resolve by their distinctions.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • (historical) a type of women's undergarment, a slip
  • Just last week she bought a new shift at the market.
  • *
  • 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.
  • * '>citation
  • * 1919 ,
  • Some wear black shifts and flesh-coloured stockings; some with curly hair, dyed yellow, are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks.
  • a change of workers, now specifically a set group of workers or period of working time
  • We'll work three shifts a day till the job's done.
  • an act of shifting; a slight movement or change
  • * Sir H. Wotton
  • My going to Oxford was not merely for shift of air.
    There was a shift in the political atmosphere.
  • * {{quote-news, year=2012, date=November 7, author=Matt Bai, title=Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds, work=New York Times citation
  • , passage=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.}}
  • (US) the gear mechanism in a motor vehicle
  • Does it come with a stick-shift ?
  • If you press shift -P, the preview display will change.
  • (computing) a bit shift
  • (baseball) The infield shift.
  • Teams often use the shift against this lefty.
  • The act of sexual petting.
  • (archaic) A contrivance, device to try when other methods fail
  • * 1596 , Shakespeare, History of King John
  • If I get down, and do not break my limbs,
    I'll find a thousand shifts to get away:
    As good to die and go, as die and stay.
  • (archaic) a trick, an artifice
  • * 1593 , Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
  • And if the boy have not a woman's gift
    To rain a shower of commanded tears,
    An onion will do well for such a shift
  • * Macaulay
  • Reduced to pitiable shifts .
  • * Shakespeare
  • I'll find a thousand shifts to get away.
  • * Dryden
  • Little souls on little shifts rely.
  • In building, the extent, or arrangement, of the overlapping of plank, brick, stones, etc., that are placed in courses so as to break joints.
  • (mining) A breaking off and dislocation of a seam; a fault.
  • Derived terms

    * blueshift * day shift * graveyard shift * make shift * night shift * preshift * shift break * shiftwork, shift work * split shift * swing shift * stickshift * redshift * (French kissing) get the shift