0 to (cause something or someone to) move or change from one position or direction to another, especially slightly: --
In cars that are automatics, you don't have to bother with shifting gears.
Media attention has shifted recently onto environmental issues.
Society's attitudes towards women have shifted enormously over the last century.
She shifted (her weight) uneasily from one foot to the other.
1 to get rid of something unwanted, or to sell something: --
2 a group of workers who do a job for a period of time during the day or night, or the period of time itself: --
3 a change in position or direction: --
There has been a dramatic shift in public opinion towards peaceful negotiations.
The shift in the balance of power in the region has had far-reaching consequences.
a shift in the wind/temperature
4 a simple dress that hangs straight from the shoulders --
5 to change direction or move from one person, position, or place to another: --
When water flows, the temperature distribution and the water composition distribution change their form or at least are shifted in the direction of the flow.
In addition, if a population shift were the source of alarms, we would expect those alarms to appear mainly in one area or another.
By shifting the threshold systematically, effectively the host population is stratified.
These organisations then shifted their attention to the observation of democratisation between elections.
But acknowledging antecedents should not blind us to important intellectual shifts in the early twentieth century.
The shifts are long enough to produce any order.
There was another shift in the 1980s, due to the needs of uncertain reasoning in virtually all applications of expert systems, especially in medicine.
This has been described as a shift from government to governance: from representative to participatory democracy.
