Shaft vs Shift - What's the difference?
shaft | shift |
(lb) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
* , (Geoffrey Chaucer):
* , (Roger Ascham):
The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin.
*
(lb) Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
* , (John Milton):
* , (Vicesimus Knox):
Any long thin object, such as the handle of a tool, one of the poles between which an animal is harnessed to a vehicle, the driveshaft of a motorized vehicle with rear-wheel drive, an axle, etc.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, title= A beam or ray of light.
* 1912 , (Willa Cather), :
The main axis of a feather.
(lb) The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick.
A long, narrow passage sunk into the earth, either natural or for artificial.
A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator; a liftshaft.
A ventilation or heating conduit; an air duct.
(lb) Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pediment.
* , (Ralph Waldo Emerson):
The main cylindrical part of the penis.
The chamber of a blast furnace.
(slang) To fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery.
to equip with a shaft.
(slang) To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with.
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= 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= To change position.
(obsolete) To change (one's clothes); also to change (someone's) underclothes.
*, II.ii.2:
* Shakespeare
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
To practice indirect or evasive methods.
* Sir Walter Raleigh
(historical) a type of women's undergarment, a slip
*
* '>citation
* 1919 ,
a change of workers, now specifically a set group of workers or period of working time
an act of shifting; a slight movement or change
* Sir H. Wotton
* {{quote-news, year=2012, date=November 7, author=Matt Bai, title=Winning a Second Term, Obama Will Confront Familiar Headwinds, work=New York Times
, 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
(computing) a bit shift
(baseball) The infield shift.
The act of sexual petting.
(archaic) A contrivance, device to try when other methods fail
* 1596 , Shakespeare, History of King John
(archaic) a trick, an artifice
* 1593 , Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
* Macaulay
* Shakespeare
* Dryden
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.
In transitive terms the difference between shaft and shift
is that shaft is to equip with a shaft while shift is to dispose of.As nouns the difference between shaft and shift
is that shaft is the entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow while shift is a type of women's undergarment, a slip.As verbs the difference between shaft and shift
is that shaft is to fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery while shift is to change, swap.shaft
English
Noun
(en noun)- His sleep, his meat, his drink, is him bereft, /
- A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.
- Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out.. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft .
- And the thunder, / Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, / Perhaps
- Some kinds of literary pursuitshave been attacked with all the shafts of ridicule.
Lee S. Langston, magazine=(American Scientist)
The Adaptable Gas Turbine, passage=Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo'', meaning ''vortex , and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.}}
- They were a fine company of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the rafters.
- Bid time and nature gently spare /
Usage notes
In Early Modern English, the shaft referred to the entire body of a long weapon, such that an arrow's "shaft" was composed of its "tip", "stale" or "steal", and "fletching". empenne as "I [[feather, fether a shafte, I put fethers upon a steale". Over time, the word came to be used in place of the former "stale" and lost its original meaning.Synonyms
* stale, stail, steal, stele, steel (arrows, spears ) * mineshaft (vertical underground passage )Verb
(en verb)- Your boss really shafted you by stealing your idea like that.
- Turns out my roommate was shafting my girlfriend.
Anagrams
* English transitive verbsshift
English
(wikipedia shift)Verb
(en verb)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.}}
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.}}
- '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 […].
- As it were to ride day and night; andnot to have patience to shift me.
- Men in distress will look to themselves, and leave their companions to shift as well as they can.
- 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)- 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.
- Some wear black shifts and flesh-coloured stockings; some with curly hair, dyed yellow, are dressed like little girls in short muslin frocks.
- We'll work three shifts a day till the job's done.
- My going to Oxford was not merely for shift of air.
- There was a shift in the political atmosphere.
citation
- Does it come with a stick-shift ?
- If you press shift -P, the preview display will change.
- Teams often use the shift against this lefty.
- 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.
- 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
- Reduced to pitiable shifts .
- I'll find a thousand shifts to get away.
- Little souls on little shifts rely.