shifty

adj

1. Subject to frequent changes in direction.

   “Off he raced, shuffling his bare feet through the hot, dry, shifty sand.”

   “The Kelsos crowding their horses up against the wagon, bumping it, making things shake inside: everything going shifty, unsteady.”

2. Moving from one object to another; not looking directly and steadily at the person with whom one is speaking.

   “1886, George Manville Fenn, This Man’s Wife, Chapter 3, in Littel’s Living Age, Volume 168, No. 2178, 20 March, 1886, p. 761, […] his quick, shifty eyes turned from the manager to the lethal weapons over the chimney, then to the safe, then to the bank, and Mr. Thickens’s back.”

   “His tinted glasses were not really opaque, but of a blue kind common enough, nor were the eyes behind them shifty, but regarded me steadily.”

   “He was thin, unsure of himself, sweet-natured and shifty-eyed; and he was Lata’s favourite.”

3. (idiomatic, informal)Having the appearance of being dishonest, criminal, or unreliable.

   “He was a shifty character in a seedy bar, and I checked my wallet was still there after talking to him.”

   “‘I don’t trust him,’ he goes on. ‘He is shifty. He is like a jackal sniffing around, looking for mischief. […]’”

4. Resourceful; full of, or ready with, shifts or expedients.

   “Shifty and thrifty as old Greek or modern Scot, there were few things he could not invent, and perhaps nothing he could not endure.”