Shapeshifter vs Shifter - What's the difference?
shapeshifter | shifter |
(fantasy, mythology) A creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will
* 2000: Glen Cook, Water Sleeps
* 2003: Michael Bathgate, The Fox's Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters, Transformations and Duplicities
* 2004: Devin Grayson, Smallville: City
One who, or that which, shifts or changes.
(dated) One who plays tricks or practices artifice; a cozener.
(nautical) An assistant to the ship's cook in washing, steeping, and shifting the salt provisions.
(engineering) An arrangement for shifting a belt sidewise from one pulley to another.
(engineering, textiles) A wire for changing a loop from one needle to another, as in narrowing, etc.
(cycling) A component used by the rider to control the gearing mechanisms and select the desired gear ratio, usually connected to the derailleur by a mechanical actuation cable.
A spanner with an adjustable jaw size.
(Webster 1913)
English agent nouns
As nouns the difference between shapeshifter and shifter
is that shapeshifter is a creature capable of changing its appearance or form at will while shifter is one who, or that which, shifts or changes.shapeshifter
English
(Shapeshifting)Noun
(en noun)- The shapeshifter Lisa Bowalk, unable to shed the guise of a black panther, had gone onto the plain as a prisoner but was not now to be found among the dead above or the Captured down below.
- Like the teller of shapeshifter' stories—who conjures a shifting world of perceptions and expectations for his or her audience that is strikingly similar to the worlds created by the ' shapeshifter for its victims—the cultural practice of imagination...is an inherently shifty enterprise....
- There have also been verified reports of fire-starters and ice-makers and a shapeshifter so powerful she was able to frame another Smallville citizen for a bank robbery!
shifter
English
Noun
(en noun)- 'Twas such a shifter that, if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down. — Milton.