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/ʃˈɪftər/ Listen

noun

Shifter n.

One who, or that which, shifts; one who plays tricks or practices artifice; a cozener. "'T was such a shifter that, if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down."

(Naut.) An assistant to the ship's cook in washing, steeping, and shifting the salt provisions.

(Mach.)

(a)

An arrangement for shifting a belt sidewise from one pulley to another.

(b)

(Knitting Mach.) A wire for changing a loop from one needle to another, as in narrowing, etc.

(construction, tunneling) A foreman responsible for the work on one shift in one area, as in one heading (4).

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Etymology of 'Shifter'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Shifter" Quotes from Famous Books

... and the servant was once more visible, standing back against it, not without a sense of his importance as, say, a scene-shifter in the play. His voice, rolling the r, was a flat bellow ...

— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... just been invalided home, I didn't think it necessary to establish an alibi. But I hastened to express my sympathy for his predicament. Fate had been kind to Dick Searles. In college he had written a play or two that demonstrated his talent, and after a rigid apprenticeship as scene-shifter and assistant producer he had made a killing with "Let George Do It," a farce that earned enough to put him at ease and make possible an upward step into straight comedy. Even as we talked a capacity house was laughing at his skit, "Who Killed Cock Robin?" just around the corner ...

— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson

... lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt, And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt, Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one, He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. 'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down; For he had any time this ten yeers full, Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull. And surely, Death could never have prevail'd, Had not his weekly cours of carriage fail'd; 10 But lately finding him so long at home, ...

— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton