130 
S H I 
To transfer from place to place. 
Pare saffron between the two St. Mary’s days. 
Or set or go shift it that knowest the ways. Tusser. 
To put by some expedient out of the way. 
I shifted him away, 
And laid good ’scuses on your ecstasy. Sha/cspenre. 
To change in position.—Neither use they sails, nor place 
their oars in order upon the sides; but carrying the oar loose 
shift it hither and thither at pleasure. Ralegh. 
We strive in vain against the seas and wind; 
Now shift your sails. Dry den. 
To change, as clothes.—As it were to ride day and night, 
and not to have patience to shift me. Shakspeare. 
To Shift off. To defer; to put away by some expe¬ 
dient.—Struggle and contrive as you will, and lay your 
taxes as you please, the traders will shift it off from their own 
gain. Locke. 
SHIFT, s. Change.—My going to Oxford was not 
merely for shift of air. Wotton. —They had three or four 
shifts of very good scenes. Drummond .—Expedient found 
or used with difficulty ; difficult means. 
Not any boast of skill, but extreme shift 
How to regain my sever’d company, 
Compell’d me to awake the courteous echo. 
To give me answer from her mossy couch. Milton. 
Indirect expedient; mean refuge; last resource.—To say, 
where the notions cannot fitly be reconciled, that there 
wanteth a term, is but a shift of ignorance. Bacon .— 
Fraud; artifice; stratagem. 
Know ye not Ulysses’ shifts ? 
Their swords less danger carry than their gifts. Denham. 
Evasion ; elusory practice.—As long as wit, by whetting 
itself, is able to find out any shift, be it never so slight, 
whereby to escape out of the hands of present contradiction, 
they are never at a stand. Hooker .—A woman’s under 
linen. 
SHIFT, a term in Music, used for conducting the hand on 
the finger-board of violins, and other instruments with a neck. 
SHIFT, in Ship Building, a term applied to disposing the 
butts of the planks, &c., so that they may over-launch each 
other, without reducing the length, and thus gain the most 
strength 
SHIFTED, in Sea Language, denotes the state of a ship’s 
ballast or cargo, when it is shaken from one-side to the 
other, when under a great pressure of sail. 
SHI'FTER, s■ One who changes, or alters the position of 
a thing; as, a scene shifter. One who plays tricks ; a man 
of artifice. 
’Twas such a shifter, that, if truth were known, 
Death was half glad when he had got him down. Milton. 
SHIFTER, a person appointed to assist the ship’s cook, 
particularly in washing, steeping and shifting the salt pro¬ 
visions. 
SHI'FTING, s. Act of changing; act of putting by 
some expedient out of the way.—The wisdom of all these 
later times, in princes’ affairs, is rather fine deliveries, and 
shftings of dangers and mischiefs when they are near, than 
solid and grounded courses to keep them aloof. Bacon. 
—Evasion; fraud. 
Nought more than subtill shftings did me please. 
With bloodshed, craftie, undermining men. Mir. for Mag. 
SHIFTING, in Ship Building, the act of setting off the 
length of the planks, &c. of a ship, so that the butts may 
over-launch each other, as to produce a good shift. 
SHI'FTINGLY, adv. Cunningly ; deceitfully. 
SHI'FTLESS, adj. Wanting expedients; wanting 
means to act or live. Unused. —He [Aubrey] was a shift - 
less person, roving and maggotty-headed, and sometimes 
little better than erased. Life of A. Wood. 
SI1IHOH, a savage tribe of Abyssinia, inhabiting the 
coast of the Red sea, near Masuah. 
SHIITES, in the Mahometan Sects, were the opponents 
S H I 
of the Kharejites. This name properly signifies sectaries 
or adherents in general, but is peculiarly used to denote those 
of Ali Ebn Abi Taleb; who maintain him to be lawful 
caliph and iman, and that the supreme authority, both in 
spirituals and temporals, of right belongs to his descendants, 
- notwithstanding that they may be deprived of it by the 
injustice of others, or their own fear. They also teach, that 
the office of iman is not a common thing, depending on the 
will of the vulgar, so that they may set up whom they 
please; but a fundamental affair of religion, and an article 
which the prophet could not have neglected, or left to the 
fancy of the common people; nay some, thence called Ima- 
mians, go so far as to assert, that religion consists solely in 
the knowledge of the true iman. The principal sects of the 
Shiites are five, which are subdivided into an almost incre¬ 
dible number; so that some understand Mohammed’s pro¬ 
phecy of the seventy odd sects, of the Shiites only. 
SHIJASHKOTAN, one of the Kurile islands, at the 
eastern extremity of Asiatic Russia, in the ocean south of 
Kamtscliatka. Lat. 49. 15. N. long. 154. 39. E. 
SIIILACON, a village of Egypt, on the eastern bank of 
the Nile; 8 miles north of Cairo. 
SHILBOTTLE, a parish of England, in Northumberland; 
3 miles south-by-east of Alnwick. Population 1104. 
SHILDON, a hamlet of England, in Durham; 3^miles 
south-east of Bishop’s Auckland. 
To SHILL, v. a. To separate: to shell. Used in the 
north. To put under cover: more properly sheal: as, 
shilling sheep. Used also in the north. 
SIIILLAY, a small island near the west coast of the island 
of Lewis; 5 miles west-south-west of Toe Head. Lat. 54. 
48. N. long. 7. 14. W. 
SHILLELAA, a village of Algiers, in Africa, the ancient 
Turapliilum ; 10 miles south-west of Burg Hamza. 
SHILLER-STONE, or Shiller-Spar, in Mineralogy, 
the diallage metalloide of Haiiy, a mineral nearly allied to 
serpentine. See Serpentine. 
SHELLING, s. [pcyllinj, Sax. and Erse, shelling, 
Dutch.] A coin of various value in different times. It is 
now twelve pence. 
The Saxon laws reckoned the pound in the round num¬ 
ber at fifty shillings, but they really coined out of it only 
forty-eight; the value of the shilling was five-pence; but it 
was reduced to four-pence above a century before the 
Conquest; for several of the Saxon laws made in Athelstan’s 
reign, oblige us to take this estimate. Thus it continued 
to the Norman times, as one of the Conqueror’s laws suf¬ 
ficiently ascertains; and it seems to have been the com¬ 
mon coin by which the English payments were adjusted. 
After the Conquest, the French solidus of twelve-pence, 
which was in use among the Normans, was called by the 
English name of shilling ; and the Saxon shilling of four- 
pence took a Norman name, and was called the groat, or 
great coin, because it was the largest English coin then known 
in England. 
The Dutch, Flemish and Germans, have likewise their 
shilling, called schelin, schilling, scalin, &c. ; but these, 
not being of the same weight or fineness with the English 
shilling, are not current at the same value. 
SHILL-I-SHALL-I, a corrupt reduplication of shall I? 
The question of a man hesitating. To stand shill-I-shall-I, 
is to continue hesitating and procrastinating.-—I am some¬ 
what dainty in making a resolution, because when I make 
it, I keep it; I don’t stand shill-I-shall-I then ; if I say’t, 
Ell do ’t. Congreve. 
SHILLINGDON, or Shitlington, a parish of England, 
in Bedfordshire; 8] miles from Luton. Population 870. 
SHILLINGFORD, a parish of England, in Berkshire; 
2| miles south-east of Great Faringdon. 
SHILLINGFORD, St. George, a parish of England, 
in Devonshire, on the river Ken; 3 miles south-south-west 
of Exeter. 
SHILLINGFORD, a hamlet of England, in Oxfordshire, 
near the river Thames; 2f miles from Wallingford. 
SHILLINGSTONE OKEFORD, a parish of England,- 
in 
