What it means
In Irish slang, to shift someone means to have a proper snog with them or make out, usually on a night out when the music's blaring and somebody's making bad decisions in the smoking area. It means kissing, not automatically sleeping with them. If your mate asks who you shifted, they're after the gossip.
Usage examples
"Did you shift anyone at the disco last night? I shifted yer man in the GAA jersey behind the smoking area. I was only a small bit locked."
"Did you shift anyone at the Coppers disco in Dublin last Saturday night? I shifted yer man in the Galway GAA jersey behind the smoking area just before two in the morning, I was only a small bit locked at the time, and his mate took my number on the way out."
"My cousin from Limerick spent the whole secondary school debs trying to shift the girl from biology class, finally caught her by the chocolate fountain at half eleven, the photographer got the picture for the yearbook the same evening, and the parents in the village were talking about it for weeks at mass."
"I shifted a fella from Cork after the band finished and now he's after liking all my Instagram stories."
"She was giving it large all night, then shifted her ex outside the chipper like nobody was watching."
Where it comes from
This Irish sense of shift has been knocking around Hiberno-English for decades. It comes from the ordinary verb shift, then drifted into schoolyard and nightlife slang for moving in on someone and getting a kiss. By the late 1900s, it was already a well-known Irish way to talk about snogging on a night out.
Other ways to say it
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