Shifting

How to spell shifting

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shifting

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shifting mean?

1. adjectiveContinually changing, moving, or unstable in position or nature.
2. verbThe act of moving something from one place, position, or state to another.

Shifting in a sentence

• adjective

  The shifting sands near the estuary made the path unsafe to walk.

• verb

  The shifting of heavy boxes between floors took the whole afternoon.

• adjective

  A shifting market forced the company to revise its forecasts every quarter.

• verb

  She was shifting the responsibility onto her colleague without warning.

Where does shifting come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows out of the Old English verb sciftan, which meant to arrange, to divide, or to allot a share, and which is closely tied to the older Germanic idea of separating things into portions. Over the medieval period the sense drifted from dividing and ordering toward the act of changing position or moving something from one place to another, and the present participle shifting simply names that ongoing movement or change. The same root gave English the noun shift, including the workplace shift, where a group of workers takes its allotted portion of the day. There is also a kinship with words in related Germanic languages that carry the sense of pushing or sliding along. The spelling stays comfortably regular: the base shift keeps its single f and t, and you simply add -ing, so the only thing to watch is resisting any urge to double the t.

How the word is built

• shift (Old English sciftan: to arrange, divide, move)
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix)