SHIFTER • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Shifter

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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

... very moment our scene-shifter changes the picture. Away rolls the image of Mrs. Kittridge's kitchen, with its sanded floor, its scoured rows of bright pewter platters, its great, deep fireplace, with wide stone hearth, its little looking-glass with a bit of asparagus bush, like a green ...

— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... you, thank you, Isobel! If only he'll come back I don't care what I do. Or I'll give up my parts if he wants them, and be a scene-shifter, if you'll lend me your carpet-slippers, and make me ...

— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing

... than the world, that which comes to a young man who has seen for an instant a particular expression on a particular face. He was supposed to be the clown, but he was really almost everything else, the author (so far as there was an author), the prompter, the scene-painter, the scene-shifter, and, above all, the orchestra. At abrupt intervals in the outrageous performance he would hurl himself in full costume at the piano and bang out some popular ...

— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... characters of the dramatis personae, were the innkeeper, at whose house Beethoven dined, and his daughter. The part of lover was taken by Ludwig Loewe, an actor, while Beethoven's part in the little drama is not much more important than that of scene-shifter. Loewe was a man in good standing, and came from a family of some prominence, but the father objected to him and forbade the daughter speaking to him. It appears that Beethoven was in the habit of coming late ...

— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer

... through all the veins of the spring. The circle of mountains which bounds the valley is covered with white from top to toe, but two hours of sunshine would melt the snow away. The snow itself is but a new caprice, a simple stage decoration ready to disappear at the signal of the scene-shifter. ...

— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward