Shift
Shift is a Germanic word — it and its relatives are found only in the Germanic branch of Proto Indo European (English, German, Dutch, and the Scandanavian languages). In Proto Germanic, the verb skiftanan meant something like “divide” or “classify”. Old English sciftan was similar in meaning, with an additional sense of “arrange”. From there the word slowly changed its meaning — “change” in 1250, “move” in 1375. A new meaning, found in the phrase shift for yourself, appeared in the 1500s.
Why did the word change its meaning? One possibility was that it was very similar in sound and meaning to an unrelated Germanic word, sift. Sometimes if two elements in language are too similar to each other, one will subtly shift to differentiate itself. This is called dissimilation, and while it is rare, one can see it perhaps in cases such as ek setera, a mispronunciation of et cetera — the original “t”, which is pronounced similarly to “s”, shifting to “k”. So it is possible that the word shift shifted to mean “change” to distinguish itself from sift.
Another possibility was that as the word changed its pronunciation, it changed its meaning as well. Originally it began with the sound “sk”, but was changed to “sh” by the 1200s.
The “sh” of shift indicates a shield or a border — a region of strong interference, as befits the turbulence in the air as it’s spoken. The border is broken (as it frequently is in “sh” words — think of shatter, shiver, shake, shock…) and the energy moves quickly up (short “i”) to a place of freedom (”f”), and thence onto a new path, a new goal (”t”). Singularly appropriate, I think!
