Shuttle

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ÊŒtÉ™l

Origin

From Old English scytel ("dart, arrow"), from Proto-Germanic *skutilaz (compare Old Norse skutill ("harpoon")), from *skut- ("project") (see shoot). Name for 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.

Full definition of shuttle

Noun

1. The part of a loom that carries the woof back and forth between the warp threads.
• SandysLike shuttles through the loom, so swiftly glide
  My feathered hours.
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 places.
4. 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).
5. A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.

Verb

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