Shaft
Pronunciation
- RP IPA: /ʃɑËft/
- Rhymes: -É‘Ëft
- US IPA: /ʃæft/
Origin
Old English sceaft, from Germanic Proto-Germanic *skaftaz. Cognate with Dutch schacht, German Schaft, Swedish skaft.
Full definition of shaft
Noun
shaft
(plural shafts)- (obsolete) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
- Geoffrey ChaucerHis sleep, his meat, his drink, is him bereft,
That lean he wax, and dry as is a shaft. - AschamA shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.
- The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin.Her hand slipped off the javelin's shaft towards the spearpoint and that's why her score was lowered.
- (by extension) Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
- John MiltonAnd the thunder,
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage,
Perhaps hath spent his shafts. - V. KnoxSome kinds of literary pursuits...have been attacked with all the shafts of ridicule.
- Any long thin object, such as the handle of a tool, one of the poles between which an animal is harnessed to a vehicle, the driveshaft of a motorized vehicle with rear-wheel drive, an axle, etc.
- 2013, Lee S. Langston, The Adaptable Gas Turbine, Turbines have been around for a long time—windmills and water wheels are early examples. The name comes from the Latin turbo, meaning vortex, and thus the defining property of a turbine is that a fluid or gas turns the blades of a rotor, which is attached to a shaft that can perform useful work.
- A beam or ray of light.Isn't that shaft of light from that opening in the cave beautiful?
- The main axis of a feather.I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!
- (lacrosse) The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick.Sarah, if you wear gloves your hands might not slip on your shaft and you can up your game, girl!
- A long, narrow passage sunk into the earth, either natural or for artificialYour grandfather used to work with a crane hauling ore out of the gold mine's shafts.
- A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator; a liftshaft.Darn it, my keys fell through the gap and into the elevator shaft.
- A ventilation or heating conduit; an air duct.Our parrot flew into the air duct and got stuck in the shaft.
- (architecture) Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pediment
- EmersonBid time and nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to thee. - The main cylindrical part of the penis.The female labia minora is homologous to the penis shaft skin of males.
- The chamber of a blast furnace.
Usage notes
In Early Modern English, the shaft refered to the entire body of a long weapon, such that an arrow's "shaft" was composed of its "tip", "stale" or "steal", and "fletching". John Palsgrave (circa 1530) glossed the French jempenne as "I fether a shafte, I put fethers upon a steale". Over time, the word came to be used in place of the former "stale" and lost its original meaning.