Shift vs Remove - What's the difference?

As nouns the difference between shift and remove

is that shift is (computing) a modifier key whose main function is shifting between two or more functions of any of certain other keys (usually by pressing shift and the other button simultaneously) while remove is the act of removing something.

As a verb remove is

(label) to move something from one place to another, especially to take away.

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

remove

English

Verb

(remov)

(label) To move something from one place to another, especially to take away.

*(Bible), (w) xix.14:

*:Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour's landmark.

*{{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=2 citation , passage=Now that she had rested and had fed from the luncheon tray Mrs. Broome had just removed , she had reverted to her normal gaiety. She looked cool in a grey tailored cotton dress with a terracotta scarf and shoes and her hair a black silk helmet.}}

# To replace a dish within a course.

#*{{quote-book, year=1959, author=(Georgette Heyer), title=(The Unknown Ajax), chapter=1

, passage=But Richmond

(label) To murder.

To dismiss a batsman.

(label) To discard, set aside, especially something abstract (a thought, feeling, etc.).

*1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.viii:

*:Die had she rather in tormenting griefe, / Then any should of falsenesse her reproue, / Or loosenesse, that she lightly did remoue .

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author= Karen McVeigh

, volume=189, issue=2, page=10, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= US rules human genes can't be patented , passage=The US supreme court has ruled unanimously that natural human genes cannot be patented, a decision that scientists and civil rights campaigners said removed a major barrier to patient care and medical innovation.}}

To depart, leave.

*:THenne the kynge dyd doo calle syre Gawayne / syre Borce / syr Lyonel and syre Bedewere / and commaunded them to goo strayte to syre Lucius / and saye ye to hym that hastely he remeue oute of my land / And yf he wil not / bydde hym make hym redy to bataylle and not distresse the poure peple

(label) To change one's residence; to move.

*(William Shakespeare)

*:Till Birnam wood remove to Dunsinane.

*1719 , (Daniel Defoe), (Robinson Crusoe)

*:Now my life began to be so easy that I began to say to myself that could I but have been safe from more savages, I cared not if I was never to remove from the place where I lived.

*1834 , (David Crockett), A Narrative of the Life of , Nebraska 1987, p.20:

*:Shortly after this, my father removed , and settled in the same county, about ten miles above Greenville.

To dismiss or discharge from office.

Synonyms

* unstay

Antonyms

* (move something from one place to another) settle, place, add

Derived terms

* removable * removal * remover

Noun

(en noun)

The act of removing something.

* (rfdate) (Milton)

This place should be at once both school and university, not needing a remove to any other house of scholarship.

* (rfdate) (Goldsmith)

And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.

(archaic) Removing a dish at a meal in order to replace it with the next course, a dish thus replaced, or the replacement.

(British) (at some public schools ) A division of the school, especially the form prior to last

A step or gradation (as in the phrase "at one remove")

* (rfdate) (Addison)

A freeholder is but one remove from a legislator.

Distance in time or space; interval.

* {{quote-book, year=2007, author=James D. McCallister, title=King's Highway, page=162, pageurl=http://books.google.com/books?id=DnRD6B3PPAoC&pg=PA162

, passage=In his unfortunate absence at this far remove of 2007, Zevon's musicianship and irascible wit are as missed as ever.}}

(dated) The transfer of one's home or business to another place; a move.

* (rfdate)

It is an English proverb that three removes are as bad as a fire.

The act of resetting a horse's shoe.

(Jonathan Swift)

References

* OED 2nd edition 1989 1000 English basic words ----