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SHIFTING
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The act of moving from one place to another
Example:
his constant shifting disrupted the class
Synonyms:
shift; shifting
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("shifting" is a kind of...):
motion; move; movement (the act of changing location from one place to another)
Derivation:
shift (change place or direction)
shift (move very slightly)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
(of soil) unstable
Example:
unfirm earth
Synonyms:
shifting; unfirm
Classified under:
Similar:
loose (not compact or dense in structure or arrangement)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Changing position or direction
Example:
shifty winds
Synonyms:
shifting; shifty
Classified under:
Similar:
unsteady (subject to change or variation)
Sense 3
Meaning:
Continuously varying
Example:
taffeta with shifting colors
Classified under:
Adjectives
Similar:
variable (liable to or capable of change)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb shift
Context examples:
It was a placing of his destiny in another's hands, a shifting of the responsibilities of existence.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
“No shifting, nothing shy, no hugging nor hauling. It’s a shame to let him fight. Take the brave fellow away!”
(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The magnetic North Pole is currently shifting toward Siberia, forcing the Global Positioning System that underlies modern navigation to update its software sooner than expected.
(Earth's last magnetic field reversal took far longer than once thought, National Science Foundation)
These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Almost as if somebody had shone a flashlight for the astronomers, the shifting corona lit up the precise region they wanted to study.
(NuSTAR sees rare blurring of black hole light, NASA)
Thia study revealed a role of the BNST GABAergic system in sleep/wakefulness control, especially in shifting animals' behavioral states from NREM sleep to wakefulness.
(The Secret Connection between Anxiety, Sleep, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)
They include: • Deviated septum - a shifting of the wall that divides the nasal cavity into halves • Nasal polyps - soft growths that develop on the lining of your nose or sinuses • Nosebleeds • Rhinitis - inflammation of the nose and sinuses sometimes caused by allergies • Nasal fractures, also known as a broken nose
(Nose Injuries and Disorders, NIH)
Ethanolamine competes with free histamine for binding at the histamine (H)-1 receptor thereby acting as an inverse agonist that combines with and stabilizes the inactive form of the H1-receptor thereby shifting the equilibrium toward the inactive state.
(Monoethanolamine, NCI Thesaurus)
Easy with that, men—easy, he ran on, to the fellows who were shifting the powder; and then suddenly observing me examining the swivel we carried amidships, a long brass nine, Here you, ship's boy, he cried, out o' that!
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
But a survey of more than 12,000 images reveals that at least one lunar mare has been cracking and shifting as much as other parts of the Moon - and may even be doing so today.
(Study Finds New Wrinkles on Earth's Moon, NASA)
