shuttle

noun

/ˈʃʌtəl/US

Etymology

From a merger of two words: * Middle English shutel, shotel, schetel, schettell, schyttyl, scutel (“bar; bolt”), from Old English sċyttel, sċutel (“bar; bolt”), equivalent to shut + -le * Middle English shutel, schetil, shotil, shetel, schootyll, shutyll, schytle, scytyl (“missile; projectile; spear”), from Old English sċytel, sċutel (“dart, arrow”), from Proto-Germanic *skutilaz. The name for a loom weaving instrument, recorded from 1338, is from a sense of being "shot" across the threads. The back-and-forth imagery inspired the extension to "passenger trains" in 1895, aircraft in 1942, and spacecraft in 1969, as well as older terms such as shuttlecock.

inherited from *skutilaz✻
inherited from sċytel
inherited from sċyttel
inherited from shutel

Definitions

1
A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom.
- My dayes are ſwifter then a weauers ſhuttle, and are ſpent without hope.
- Like shuttles through the loom, so swiftly glide My feather'd hours, and all my hopes deride!.
- By placing the sword edgewise, the weaver keeps the countershed open, in order to shoot through the shuttle.
The sliding thread holder in a sewing machine, which carries the lower thread through a…
The sliding thread holder in a sewing machine, which carries the lower thread through a loop of the upper thread, to make a lock stitch.
3
A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two or more…
A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two or more places.
- The shuttle bus runs to the airport on a half-hourly basis from the central station.
›+ 6 more definitionsshow fewer
1. 4
  Such a transport vehicle
  Such a transport vehicle; a shuttle bus; a space shuttle.
  - You're saying we take the parking shuttles, reinforce them with aluminum siding and then head to the gun store where our friend Andy plays some cowboy-movie, jump-on-the-wagon bullshit.
2. Any other item that moves repeatedly back and forth between two positions, possibly…
  Any other item that moves repeatedly back and forth between two positions, possibly transporting something else with it between those points (such as, in chemistry, a molecular shuttle).
3. A shuttlecock.
4. A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.
5. To go or send back and forth between two places.
6. 9
  To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.
  - Guests can be shuttled to and from the hotel for no extra cost.
  - It may get even busier in town when a sleek train service called the Brightline debuts this summer, shuttling travelers between nearby West Palm Beach and Miami.

The neighborhood

Derived

multishuttle, nanoshuttle, shuttlebay, shuttle box, shuttle bus, shuttlebus, shuttlecock, shuttle conveyor, shuttlecraft, shuttle diplomacy, shuttle driver, shuttleless, shuttlelike, shuttleport, shuttle race, shuttle run, shuttle trade, shuttle vector, shuttlewise, Space Shuttle, weavers' shuttle, shuttler

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at shuttle. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

A definitional loop anchored at shuttle. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

8 hops · closes at shuttle

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA