Meaning of make shift | Babel Free

Definitions

To contrive; to invent a way of surmounting a difficulty.

dated, transitive

Equivalents

Examples

“Nerissa: How like you the young German, the Duke of Saxony's nephew? Portia: Very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, and most vilely in the afternoon, when he is drunk: when he is best, he is a little worse than a man, and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast. And the worst fall that ever fell, I hope I shall make shift to go without him.”

“Ecod, I thank your worship, I'll make a shift to stay my stomach with a slice of cold beef in the pantry.”

“The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a noble race of men.”

“We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols.”

“I was unable to handle a brig (which the Hispaniola should have been), but I thought I could make shift to sail her as a schooner without public shame.”

“The military historian must often make shift to write of battles with slender data, but he can pad out his deficiencies by learned parallels.”

CEFR level