shuttle

A weaving shuttle.

Meanings

Noun

Verb

Origin

  • From a merger of two words:
  • Middle English shutel, shotel, schetel, schettell, schyttyl, scutel, from Old English sċyttel, sċutel, equivalent to shut + -le
  • Middle English shutel, schetil, shotil, shetel, schootyll, shutyll, schytle, scytyl, from Old English sċytel, sċutel, 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.

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