shuttle
English
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.
Pronunciation
- Rhymes: -ʌtəl
- (US) IPA(key): [ˈʃʌɾel]
Audio (US) (file)
Noun
shuttle (plural shuttles)
- (weaving) The part of a loom that carries the woof back and forth between the warp threads.
- 1611, King James Version, Job 7:6:
- My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without hope.
- 1638, George Sandys, "A Paraphrase upon Job":
- Like shuttles through the loom, so swiftly glide
- My feather'd hours, and all my hopes deride!.
- 1611, King James Version, Job 7:6:
- 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.
- A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two places, sometimes more.
- Such a transport vehicle; a shuttle bus; a space shuttle.
- 2004, Dawn of the Dead, 1:14:20:
- 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.
- 2004, Dawn of the Dead, 1:14:20:
- 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).
- A shuttlecock.
- A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.
Usage notes
Strictly speaking, a shuttle goes back and forth between two places. However, the term is also used more generally for short-haul transport that may be one-way or have multiple stops (including shared ride or loop), particularly for airport buses; compare loose usage of limousine.
Translations
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Verb
shuttle (third-person singular simple present shuttles, present participle shuttling, simple past and past participle shuttled)
- (intransitive) To go back and forth between two places.
- (transitive) To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.
Translations
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Derived terms
Dutch
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈʃʏ.təl/
Audio (file) - Hyphenation: shut‧tle
- Rhymes: -ʏtəl
Noun
shuttle m (plural shuttles, diminutive shuttletje n)
- A space shuttle.
- A shuttlecock, shuttle.
- A shuttle bus.