shaft
Contents
English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Old English sceaft, from Proto-Germanic *skaftaz. Cognate with Dutch schacht, German Schaft, Swedish skaft.
Pronunciation[edit]
Noun[edit]
shaft (plural shafts)
- (obsolete) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
- 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. 1515-1568,, Roger Ascham:
- A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.
- c. 1343-1400,, Geoffrey Chaucer:
- The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin.
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Her hand slipped off the javelin's shaft towards the spearpoint and that's why her score was lowered.
- 1879, Richard Jefferies, The Amateur Poacher, chapterII:
- 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.
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- (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.
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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.
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- A beam or ray of light.
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Isn't that shaft of light from that opening in the cave beautiful?
- 1912, Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl:
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- The main axis of a feather.
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I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!
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- (lacrosse) The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick.
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Sarah, if you wear gloves your hands might not slip on your shaft and you can up your game, girl!
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- A long, narrow passage sunk into the earth, either natural or for artificial.
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Your grandfather used to work with a crane hauling ore out of the gold mine's shafts.
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- A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator; a liftshaft.
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Darn it, my keys fell through the gap and into the elevator shaft.
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- A ventilation or heating conduit; an air duct.
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Our parrot flew into the air duct and got stuck in the shaft.
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- (architecture) Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pediment.
- 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.
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The female labia minora is homologous to the penis shaft skin of males.
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- The chamber of a blast furnace.
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]
Derived terms[edit]
Terms derived from shaft
Translations[edit]
long narrow body of spear or arrow
beam or ray of light
any long, thin object
main axis of a feather
lacrosse: long narrow body of the stick
long passage sunk into the earth
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vertical passage housing a lift
ventilation or heating conduit
the shaft of the penis
- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked
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.
- Your boss really shafted you by stealing your idea like that.
- (transitive) To equip with a shaft.
- (transitive, slang) To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with.
- Turns out my roommate was shafting my girlfriend.
Translations[edit]
slang: to engage in a malicious act
Anagrams[edit]
Categories:
- English terms derived from Old English
- English terms derived from Proto-Germanic
- English 1-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- English terms with obsolete senses
- English terms with usage examples
- en:Lacrosse
- en:Architecture
- English verbs
- English transitive verbs
- English slang
- en:Light