shuffle

noun

1. 1

   The act of mixing cards or mah-jong tiles so as to randomize them.

   He made a real mess of the last shuffle.

2. 2

   The act of reordering anything, such as music tracks in a media player.

3. 3

   An instance of walking without lifting one's feet.

   The sad young girl left with a tired shuffle.

4. 4

   A rhythm commonly used in blues music, consisting of a series of triplet notes with the middle note missing, so that it sounds like a long note followed by a short note, and suggests a walker dragging one foot.

5. 5

   A dance move in which the foot is scuffed back and forth across the floor.

6. 6

   A trick; an artifice; an evasion.

   The Gifts of Nature are beyond all the Shams and Shuffles in the World.

verb

1. 1

   To put in a random order.

   Don't forget to shuffle the cards.

   You shuffle, and I'll deal.

   The data packets are shuffled before transmission.

   I'm going to shuffle all the songs in my playlist.

2. 2

   To change; modify the order of something.

   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.

3. 3

   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.

   [T]he aged creature came, / Shuffling along with ivory-headed wand, […]

   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.

4. 4

   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.

5. 5

   To use arts or expedients; to make shift.

   Your life, good master, / Must shuffle for itself.

6. 6

   To shove one way and the other; to push from one to another.

   to shuffle money from hand to hand

7. 7

   To remove or introduce by artificial confusion.

   Therefore you do vvell to have recourſe to your laſt Evaſion, that it vvas contriv'd by your Enemies, and ſhuffled into the Papers that vvere ſeiz'd: vvhich yet you ſee the Nation is not ſo eaſy to believe as your ovvn Fury; […]

Forms

plural

shuffles

past tense

shuffled

past participle

shuffled

present participle

shuffling

third person singular

shuffles