Word.ws English Dictionary

making shift

making shift is the present participle and gerund of make shift.

Meaning of make shift

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]...

Questions about making shift

What is making shift the present participle and gerund of?
Making shift is the present participle and gerund of make shift.

Words near making shift in the dictionary

  1. making pretend
  2. making quick work of
  3. making right
  4. making room
  5. making sense
  6. making shift
  7. making shit of
  8. making shit shake
  9. making short work of
  10. making some noise
  11. making someone hard to catch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making shift (page history and authors); 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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Cite this entry: “making shift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_shift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.