shifty

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'It was a very difficult day; the wind was very shifty, and difficult to predict.

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Definitions (9)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (3)

  1. adjective Having, displaying, or suggestive of deceitful character; evasive or untrustworthy.
  2. adjective Distinguished by frequent changes in direction: shifty winds.
  3. adjective Able to accomplish what is needed; resourceful.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (3)

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

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (2)

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Examples (50)

  • His eyes were momentarily shifty, and the fantastic notion that he might be physically afraid of them was forced upon them both. —  Deadly Duo: ‘Wanted, someone innocent’—‘Last act’ - Margery Allingham
  • Others had a shifty, cunning look, no less repulsive There were a few good-humoured faces, one or two so different from the others, that Reuben wondered whether they were innocent victims of circumstances, as he had so nearly been. —  A Final Reckoning A Tale of Bush Life in Australia
  • Haw was a sandy-haired man with shifty, uneasy eyes; Terry of a bulldog type, stocky and powerful. —  The Trail of '98 A Northland Romance
  • He was dressed with Calvinistic simplicity entirely in black, and just as this contrasted with the King's suit of sulphur-coloured satin, so did the gravity of his countenance contrast with the stupidity of his sovereign's Charles IX, a slimly built young man in his twenty-fourth year, was of a pallid, muddy complexion, with great, shifty, greenish eyes, and a thick, pendulous nose. —  The Historical Nights' Entertainment First Series
  • "I'm going to have ye all posted and put on the teown Murmurs of rich and deep laughter A tall, dark form, shifty-eyed, had been insensibly moving and disintegrating me from the group. —  Vesty of the Basins
 

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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

sneaky ·  sheepish ·  sidelong ·  sly ·  secretive ·  crafty ·  quizzical ·  morose ·  spiteful ·  downcast ·  avaricious ·  furtive
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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/ˈʃɪfti/
by American Heritage

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