Shiftiness
noun
noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The property of being shifty. uncountable
"Mr. Henderson's chief trouble seems to be that he cannot forget his old shiftiness of views and his pendulum-like swingings between Liberalism and Independent Labourism[…]"
- 2 the quality of being changeable in direction wordnet
- 3 The result or product of being shifty. countable, rare
"I had the grace or humility sometimes to see myself as a mass of shiftinesses; a few dogmas might help to steady me."
- 4 the quality of being a slippery rascal wordnet
Example
More examples"Mr. Henderson's chief trouble seems to be that he cannot forget his old shiftiness of views and his pendulum-like swingings between Liberalism and Independent Labourism[…]"
Etymology
From shifty + -ness.
More for "shiftiness"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.