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Glite Dictionary
swing shift

swing shift

3 4.3
An evening work shift from late afternoon until around midnight
  • noun
  • /swɪŋ ʃɪft/
  • US
translation icon : turno de tarde
  • Back in the 80s, I worked at a daily newspaper, on the swing shift, getting off work about 1-2 a.m. every day.
  • worked the swing shift

So let's let them do the swing shift or night shift for maybe four days in a week.

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Examples

  • The son-in-law worked the swing shift, and he cheered her in the morning when he got up and made coffee.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • She came off swing shift one night and found her car wouldn't start, so she caught a ride with three guys she knew at work: Willie, Duane, and Lamarr.

    Fiction book (1993)

  • I mean, I remember as a kid, I, I had a job working swing shift at a credit card company in the mail room.

  • So let's let them do the swing shift or night shift for maybe four days in a week.

    FoundMyFitness

  • I came home from swing shift, and the kids had not cleaned up the house like I told them to.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • I was working the swing shift as a quality inspector at Hanes.

    Fiction book (2002)

  • He worked swing shifts, and this was his day to be on, but she heard him banging around in the kitchen.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Here in Berkeley in the late 1950s, as at the war laboratories, there were day shifts, night shifts, and swing shifts running round-the-clock experiments.

    Academic text (1997)

  • I work the swing shift from 4 PM to midnight every weekday.

  • Mr. Wainwright makes his living working the swing shift as a correctional officer at a state prison.

Synonyms

evening shift
vsswing shift
3 2.7

A period of work in the late afternoon and evening

is an alternative label for that same timing

Antonyms

day shift
12 2.2

A period of work during the day, usually from morning to afternoon, or the workers who work then

How Late

night shift
52 2.1
swing shift
  • US
3 4.3
day shift
12 2.2

Surface Forms

swing shift singular
swing shifts plural

Morphology

swing + shift

The noun 'shift' clearly denotes a work period, but 'swing' does not literally mean 'evening' — it rather conveys movement or an intermediate/alternating period. Learners who know both words can plausibly infer that 'swing shift' refers to a middle/evening shift, but this specific temporal interpretation is not strictly compositional or immediately predictable, so it is only partially transparent.

Etymology

Swing shift comes from the picture of a clock hand moving between day and night, so the swing is the middle time and the shift is the work period. That's why the phrase means a work time in the 'evening' between the day and night shifts.