shuttle

Meaning

Noun

1. A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom.
2. 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 places.
4. Such a transport vehicle; a shuttle bus; a space shuttle.
5. 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).
6. A shuttlecock.
7. A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.

Verb

1. (intransitive, transitive) To go or send back and forth between two places.
2. (transitive) To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.

Synonyms

bobbin

shuttlecock

birdie

bird

🐦

rabbit

🐰

space shuttle

commute

vacillate

rod

seesaw

weaver’s shuttle

spindle

tier

train

🚋

walking stick

weave

bamboo shuttle

form of a cylinder

badminton

🏸

aerospaceplane

cane

comb

crutch

🩼

dart

🎯

ferry

⛴️

ferryboat

money-box

permute

spacecraft

spaceship

stick

Translations

navette

lanzadera

Schiffchen

bobina

fuso del telaio

navetta

Weberschiffchen

Pendelverkehr

bobina

volant

furet

volant

pendeln

Spule

مَكُوك

Pronounced as (IPA)

/ˈʃʌtəl/

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English: shutel

Inherited from Old English: sċyttel

Inherited from Old English: sċytel

In summary

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.

Sentences

A bus shuttle took us from the airport to the metro .