shuffling

• IPA^(key): /ˈʃʌfl̩ɪŋ/

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shuffling

1. present participle and gerund of shuffle

shuffling (plural shufflings)

1. The act or motion of one who shuffles.
   • 2000, Alan Bennett, Writing Home:

     Jane Gibson taught the cast the movements of the various creatures they were representing: the linear shufflings of the hedgehogs, the dozy lollopings of the rabbits, the sinuous dartings of the weasel and so on.

2. The noise created by something moving about.
   • 2011, John O'Loughlin, Two Sides of the Same Coin:

     He would also have been exposed to the coughings and shufflings, comings and goings, questions and answers, wailings and slammings, snivellings and sneezings, etc., which figured so prominently in the reference room […]

3. (dated) Trickery.
   • 1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill:

     Then he warmed to it, and smoothly set out all his shifts, malices, and treacheries, his extreme boldnesses (he was desperate bold); his retreats, shufflings, and counterfeitings (he was also inconceivably a coward) […]

shuffling (comparative more shuffling, superlative most shuffling)

1. Moving with a dragging, scraping step.
   • c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     This world I do renounce, and in your sights / Shake patiently my great affliction off.

2. Evasive.
   • 1712, Jonathan Swift, The History of John Bull:

     a shuffling excuse