Shifting

noun, verb

noun, verb ·2 syllables ·Common ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A shift or change; a shifting movement.

    "I remember the last time I saw Macbeth played, the discrepancy I felt at the changes of garment which he varied, the shiftings and reshiftings, like a Romish priest at mass."

  2. 2
    the act of moving from one place to another wordnet
  3. 3
    The phenomenon by which two or more constituents appearing on the same side of their common head exchange positions to obtain non-canonical order.
Verb
  1. 1
    present participle and gerund of shift form-of, gerund, participle, present
Adjective
  1. 1
    (of soil) unstable wordnet
  2. 2
    changing position or direction wordnet
  3. 3
    continuously varying wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
shiftshiftyvariableaberrancyaberrantaberration

Example

More examples

"The shifting pattern of world trade is made clear in the following table."

Related phrases

gear-shiftingmoney shiftingpixel shiftingreality shiftingshifting cultivationshifting executory interestshifting spannertime shifting

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.