makeshift

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“
Anyhow the unification of the content of thought and its essence had to be made, and this could not be done except by what may be regarded as a makeshift--a transcendent illusion running on from beginningless time.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. noun A temporary or expedient substitute for something else.
  2. adjective Suitable as a temporary or expedient substitute: used a rock as a makeshift hammer.
  3. Syntax Note
    Synonyms: makeshift, expedient, resort, stopgap
    These nouns denote something used as a substitute when other means fail or are not available: lacked a cane but used a stick as a makeshift; exhausted every expedient before filing suit; will use force only as a last resort; a crate serving as a stopgap for a chair.

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Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

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Examples (50)

  • The Cabalists had set up a makeshift arena and staged a fighting demonstration. —  SCOTT McGOUGH
  • ALAN Shearer has been forced to name a makeshift back four as he prepares to take charge of his first game as Newcastle United manager.
  • In the second half of the twentieth century, that geography came to serve as backdrop to the unmajestic, ignoble life in the valleys and foothills, where low-rise, makeshift, ad hoc settlements stand in plain view of the snowcaps and forest, mockingly diminished by their spectacular surrounding nature. —  The New York Review of Books
  • "That night, some of the fish survived, and we helped him set up the kiddie pools in a makeshift area out back," she said.
  • The demonstrators carried 10 cardboard boxes -- makeshift coffins draped with the Palestinian flag. —  Top Stories - Google News
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

wooden ·  nearby ·  crude ·  portable ·  flimsy ·  rickety ·  outer ·  circular ·  temporary ·  movable ·  ornate ·  rude
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 

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/ˈmeɪkʃɪft/
by American Heritage

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