shuffling

Etymology

verb

1. present participle and gerund of shuffle

noun

1. The act or motion of one who shuffles.
   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. 2000, Alan Bennett, Writing Home
2. The noise created by something moving about.
   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 […] 2011, John O'Loughlin, Two Sides of the Same Coin
3. (dated) Trickery.
   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) […] 1906, Rudyard Kipling, Puck of Pook's Hill

adj

1. Moving with a dragging, scraping step.
2. Evasive.
   a shuffling excuse 1712, Jonathan Swift, The History of John Bull