Definition of SHUTTLE

shuttle

Plural: shuttles

Noun

  • badminton equipment consisting of a ball of cork or rubber with a crown of feathers
  • public transport that consists of a bus or train or airplane that plies back and forth between two points
  • bobbin that passes the weft thread between the warp threads
  • 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.
  • 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.

Verb

Verb Forms: shuttled, shuttling, shuttles

  • To move or travel frequently back and forth between two points.
  • travel back and forth between two points
  • To go or send back and forth between two places.
  • To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.

Examples

  • Guests can be shuttled to and from the hotel for no extra cost.
  • The shuttle bus runs to the airport on a half-hourly basis from the central station.
  • The tile bag seemed to shuttle between good and bad draws, never consistently one or the other.

Origin / Etymology

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.

Scrabble Score: 10

shuttle: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Word
shuttle: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
shuttle: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary

Words With Friends Score: 11

shuttle: valid Words With Friends Word