Word.ws English Dictionary

make shift

make shift verb: to contrive; to invent a way of surmounting a difficulty. Also the alternative form of makeshift.

Verb

make shift (third-person singular simple present makes shift, present participle making shift, simple past and past participle made shift)

  1. (dated, transitive) To contrive; to invent a way of surmounting a difficulty.
    • Nerissa: How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew?
      Portia: Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast. And the worst fall...c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Ecod, I thank your worship, I'll make a shift to stay my stomach with a slice of cold beef in the pantry.1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer

Also used as

make shift is also the alternative form of makeshift.

Examples of make shift in a sentence

  • They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter 1, in Walden:
  • We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols.1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXII, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American...
  • I was unable to handle a brig (which the Hispaniola should have been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame.1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Art of Writing:
  • The military historian must often make shift to write of battles with slender data, but he can pad out his deficiencies by learned parallels.1922, John Buchan, Huntingtower, chapter 14:

Synonyms of make shift

Forms of make shift

Verb
third-person singular presentmakes shift
present participlemaking shift
past participlemade shift
pastmade shift
Adjective
comparativemore make shift
superlativemost make shift
Noun
pluralmake shifts

Words formed from make shift

Questions about make shift

What does make shift mean?
Make shift means to contrive; to invent a way of surmounting a difficulty.
How do you use make shift in a sentence?
They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.
What part of speech is make shift?
Make shift is a verb.
What is the past tense of make shift?
The past tense of make shift is made shift.

Words near make shift in the dictionary

  1. make right
  2. make room
  3. make sail
  4. make semblant
  5. make sense
  6. make shift
  7. make shifts
  8. make ship
  9. make shit of
  10. make shit shake
  11. make short work of

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make shift (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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