shifty.
Subject to frequent changes in direction.
Meaning & usage
Subject to frequent changes in direction.
Moving from one object to another; not looking directly and steadily at the person with whom one is speaking.
Having the appearance of being dishonest, criminal, or unreliable.
He was a shifty character in a seedy bar, and I checked my wallet was still there after talking to him.
Resourceful; full of, or ready with, shifts or expedients.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree English shift Proto-Indo-European *-kos Proto-Germanic *-gaz Proto-West Germanic *-g Old English -iġ Middle English -y English -y English shifty From shift + -y. Cognate with Dutch schiftig (“loose-fitting, open-textured”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.