shaft
English
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9f/Brooklyn_Museum_22.1014_Spear_Shaft_%282%29.jpg/220px-Brooklyn_Museum_22.1014_Spear_Shaft_%282%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bf/Shaft_of_Indian_Peacock_tail_feather.jpg/220px-Shaft_of_Indian_Peacock_tail_feather.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/53/Lacrosse_stick_%28The_National_Game_of_Canada%29.jpg/220px-Lacrosse_stick_%28The_National_Game_of_Canada%29.jpg)
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a5/KONE_UltraRope_in_elevator_shaft.jpg)
Etymology
[edit]From Middle English schaft, from Old English sċeaft, from Proto-West Germanic *skaft, from Proto-Germanic *skaftaz. Cognate with Dutch schacht, German German Schaft, Swedish skaft.
Pronunciation
[edit]- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ʃɑːft/
- (US) IPA(key): /ʃæft/
Audio (General Australian): (file) - Rhymes: -ɑːft
Noun
[edit]shaft (plural shafts)
- (obsolete) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
- c. 1515-1568, Roger Ascham:
- A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.
- c. 1515-1568, Roger Ascham:
- 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.
- 1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:
- Orion hit a rabbit once; but though sore wounded it got to the bury, and, struggling in, the arrow caught the side of the hole and was drawn out. […]. Ikey the blacksmith had forged us a spearhead after a sketch from a picture of a Greek warrior; and a rake-handle served as a shaft.
- (by extension) Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
- c. 1608-1674, John Milton:
- And the thunder, / Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, / Perhaps hath spent his shafts.
- c. 1752-1821, Vicesimus Knox:
- Some kinds of literary pursuits […] have been attacked with all the shafts of ridicule.
- c. 1608-1674, John Milton:
- 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.
- 1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 57:
- While Kitto chatted to William, Jessamy looked with interest at the dog cart. It had a pair of high wooden wheels with two seats back to back above. Between the shafts the bay mare tossed her head and fidgeted on the cobbles.
- 2013 July-August, Lee S. Langston, “The Adaptable Gas Turbine”, in American Scientist:
- 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?
- 1912, Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl::
- 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 vertical or inclined passage sunk into the earth as part of a mine
- Your 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 pedestal.
- c. 1803-1882, Ralph Waldo Emerson:
- Bid time and nature gently spare / The shaft we raise to thee.
- c. 1803-1882, Ralph Waldo Emerson:
- 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.
- (meteorology) A relatively small area of precipitation that an onlook can discern from the dry surrounding area.
Usage notes
[edit]In Early Modern English, the shaft referred to the entire body of a long weapon, such that an arrow's "shaft" was composed of its "tip", "stale" or "steal", and "fletching". Palsgrave (circa 1530) glossed the French j[']empenne 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.
Synonyms
[edit]- stale, stail, steal, stele, steel (arrows, spears)
- (main axis of a feather): rachis
- mineshaft (vertical underground passage)
Derived terms
[edit]- aftershaft
- airshaft
- angle shaft
- backshaft
- brakeshaft
- camshaft
- cardan shaft
- Cardan shaft
- clutchshaft
- cockshaft
- countershaft, counter shaft
- crankshaft
- crankshaft
- driveshaft
- drive shaft
- driving shaft
- dropshaft
- elevator shaft
- equivalent shaft horsepower
- foreshaft
- get the shaft
- give someone the shaft
- hail shaft
- hairshaft
- half shaftradial shaft seal
- jackshaft
- liftshaft
- line shaft
- Microshaft
- midshaft
- mineshaft, mine shaft
- propeller shaft
- prop shaft
- propshaft
- reversing shaft
- rock shaft
- shaft alley
- shaft bow
- shaft cave
- shaft encoder
- shaft furnace
- shaft horsepower
- shaftless
- shaftlike
- shaftman
- shaftment
- shaftwork
- spearshaft
- sunshaft
- view shaft
Translations
[edit]
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
|
Verb
[edit]shaft (third-person singular simple present shafts, present participle shafting, simple past and past participle shafted)
- (transitive, slang) To fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:deceive
- Your boss really shafted you by stealing your idea like that.
- 1992, “Crackers And Cheese”, performed by Eminem:
- Who can I trust after repeatedly being shafted
- (transitive) To equip with a shaft.
- (transitive, slang) To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with.
- Synonyms: see Thesaurus:copulate with
- Turns out my roommate was shafting my girlfriend.
- 1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 252:
- Which grotesque auld hing-oot will the shrivelled post-menopausal slag want tae shaft? Stay tuned.
- 2018 Christian Cooke as Mickey Argyle, "Episode 2", Ordeal by Innocence (written by Sarah Phelps) 23 minutes
- Well at least I can get it up. No wonder Mary's going out of her head. Stuck with you sponging off her and not even a decent shafting for her trouble.
Translations
[edit]Anagrams
[edit]Middle English
[edit]Etymology 1
[edit]From Old English sċeaft (“shaft”).
Noun
[edit]shaft
- Alternative form of schaft (“shaft”)
- c. 1343-1400, Geoffrey Chaucer:
- His sleep, his meat, his drink, is him bereft, / That lean he wax, and dry as is a shaft.
- c. 1343-1400, Geoffrey Chaucer:
Etymology 2
[edit]From Old English sċeaft (“creation”).
Noun
[edit]shaft
- Alternative form of schaft (“creation”)
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *(s)kep-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms inherited from Old English
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms inherited from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-West Germanic
- English terms inherited from Proto-Germanic
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English terms with audio links
- Rhymes:English/ɑːft
- Rhymes:English/ɑːft/1 syllable
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English terms with usage examples
- English terms with quotations
- en:Lacrosse
- en:Architecture
- en:Meteorology
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English slang
- en:Light
- Middle English terms inherited from Old English
- Middle English terms derived from Old English
- Middle English lemmas
- Middle English nouns