shift
definition
a change in focus or direction
example
The sudden shift in the company's marketing strategy caught its competitors by surprise.
synonyms
alterationchangetransition
word origin — Old English sciftan ‘arrange, divide, apportion’, of Germanic origin; related to German schichten ‘to layer, stratify’. A common Middle English sense ‘change, replace’ gave rise to shift (via the notion of changing one's clothes) and shift (via the concept of relays of workers)