Link Centre Dictionary

shuttle

US/ˈʃʌtəl/ fairly common
verb (1) noun (3)

verb

1.

travel back and forth between two points

noun

1.

badminton equipment consisting of a ball of cork or rubber with a crown of feathers

Synonyms
2.

public transport that consists of a bus or train or airplane that plies back and forth between two points

3.

bobbin that passes the weft thread between the warp threads

Origin

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.

Phrases

  • shuttle box
  • shuttle bus
  • shuttle conveyor
  • shuttle diplomacy
  • shuttle driver
  • shuttle race
  • shuttle run
  • shuttle trade

Related words

Word family

Broader terms

Narrower terms

WordNet 2.1 (Princeton University). Wiktionary (CC BY-SA). CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. WordNet 2.1 Copyright Princeton University. All rights reserved. Wiktionary content is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike Licence.