make shift
verb1
Dated To contrive; to invent a way of surmounting a difficulty.
- 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.c. 1596–1598 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merchant of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene ii]:
- Ecod, I thank your worship, I'll make a shift to stay my stomach with a slice of cold beef in the pantry.1773, Oliver Goldsmith, She Stoops to Conquer:
4 more examples
- 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.1854, Henry David Thoreau, chapter 1, in Walden:
- We could find no matches, and so we tried to make shift with the pistols.1870–1871 (date written), Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXII, in Roughing It, Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company [et al.], published 1872, →OCLC, page 232:
- 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.1905, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Art of Writing:
- The military historian must often make shift to write of battles with slender data, but he can pad out his deficiencies by learned parallels.1922, John Buchan, Huntingtower, chapter 14:
- Derived terms
- makeshift