Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
shuffle (plural shuffles)
- The act of shuffling cards.
- He made a real mess of the last shuffle.
- An instance of walking without lifting one's feet.
- The sad young girl left with a tired shuffle.
- (by extension, music) A rhythm commonly used in blues music. Consists of a series of triplet notes with the middle note missing, so that it sounds like a long note followed by a short note. Sounds like a walker dragging one foot.
- A trick; an artifice; an evasion.
- The gifts of nature are beyond all shame and shuffles. — L'Estrange.
- 1995, Mel Kernahan, White savages in the South Seas, Verso, page 113:
- As I lay there listening to the strange night sounds, I hear the shuffle of someone creeping by outside in the grass.
- 2003, Edmund G. Bansak & Robert Wise, Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career, McFarland, page 394:
- She has a crippled leg, and every time she walks we hear the shuffle of her crinoline skirt and the thumping of her cane.
- 2008, Markus Zusak, The Book Thief, Pan Macmillan Australia, page 148:
- Around her, she could hear the shuffle of her own hands, disturbing the shelves.
act of shuffling cards
- to get / become / be lost in the shuffle
- To put in a random order.
- Don't forget to shuffle the cards.
- You shuffle, I'll deal.
- The data packets are shuffled before transmission.
- I'm going to shuffle all the songs in my playlist.
- To move in a slovenly, dragging manner; to drag or scrape the feet in walking or dancing.
- He shuffled out of the room.
- I shuffled my feet in embarrassment.
- The aged creature came / Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand.
1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 4, in The Subtle Minotaur:
- The band played ceaselessly. Even when the other instruments were resting the pianist kept up his monotonous vamping, with a dreary furbelow for embellishment here and there, to which some few of the dancers continued to shuffle round the floor.
- To change; modify the order of something.
2010 December 28, Marc Vesty, “Stoke 0 - 2 Fulham”, in BBC:
- But, rather than make a change up front, Hughes shuffled his defence for this match, replacing Carlos Salcido with Baird, in a move which few would have predicted would prove decisive.
- To change one's position; to shift ground; to evade questions; to resort to equivocation; to prevaricate.
- I myself, […] hiding mine honour in my necessity, am fain to shuffle.
- To use arts or expedients; to make shift.
- Your life, good master, / Must shuffle for itself.
- To shove one way and the other; to push from one to another.
- to shuffle money from hand to hand
- To remove or introduce by artificial confusion.
- It was contrived by your enemies, and shuffled into the papers that were seiz'd.
- (walk without picking up one's feet): shamble
to put in a random order
to walk without picking up one's feet