- 1
A shiftless person is lazy in a particular way: they do not try, they do not plan, and they seem to have no wish to get on. It is stronger and ruder than just lazy. You might hear an older speaker use it about someone who will not look for work, or who lets things fall apart. It is old-fashioned and rather harsh; a kind person would not throw this word at a student. Though actually, the shift in shiftless is not the “move to another place” shift. In older English, a shift was a way of managing — the knack of looking after yourself. So shiftless first meant “without that knack,” and then “unwilling to make any effort.” It is not the opposite of , even though both start with shift: a person is busy in a sneaky way; a shiftless person can hardly be bothered to be busy at all.
不求上進、懶散
組成shift + -less. Shift here is the old sense “a way of managing, making an effort.” -less means “without.”
同家族的字
- shiftthe shift here is an old sense: a way of managing or making an effort, not moving place
- shiftlessnessthe noun for this lazy quality
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
shiftlessadj
- 1
Lazy, unmotivated.
- To expand, without bothering about it—without shiftless timidity on one side, or loquacious eagerness on the other—to the full compass of what he would have called a "pleasant" experience, was Newman's most definite programme of life.
- Decades ago, before credit scores, loan officers could make decisions almost whimsically and your fate could hinge on whether you reminded them of someone, or they had slept poorly the night before, or they harbored stereotypes of "shiftless blacks" and "flighty women."
- 2
Untrustworthy as a result of being incompetent at the job.
- 3
Destitute of shifts or expedients; lacking proper means.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。