shuttle.
A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom.
Meaning & usage
A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom.
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.
A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two or more places.
The shuttle bus runs to the airport on a half-hourly basis from the central station.
Such a transport vehicle; a shuttle bus; a space shuttle.
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).
A shuttlecock.
A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.
Where this word comes from
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.
To go or send back and forth between two places.
To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.
Guests can be shuttled to and from the hotel for no extra cost.
Where this word comes from
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.
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.