Shifter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who moves between different roles, locations, or tasks ; a mechanism used to change the gear settings in a vehicle or machine
2. An individual who switches jobs, places, or activities often ; a control that allows selection of different gears in a car or bike
3. One who transfers or moves from one position or function to another ; a component that adjusts the transmission to alter speed or power

Etymology: The word is simply "shift" with the agent suffix "-er," meaning one who or that which shifts. "Shift" itself traces back to Old English "sciftan," meaning to arrange or divide, and the "-er" ending came into English through Old French "-ier," which descended from Latin "-arius," a suffix for a person or thing connected with something. The combination is ordinary English word-building, so the interesting part is how the sense of "shift" moved from arranging things to moving between them. The two senses of the word follow different paths. For a person, it describes someone who changes jobs, places, or activities often, a restless worker who keeps moving from one thing to the next. For machinery, it names the control that selects gears in a car or bicycle, the device that does the shifting for the driver. Both uses rest on the same core idea of changing position or state, applied to a human or to a mechanism.

Synonyms: mover, changer

Antonyms: stabilizer