shaft
English
![](../I/m/Brooklyn_Museum_22.1014_Spear_Shaft_(2).jpg)
Spear shafts
Drive shaft
![](../I/m/Shaft_of_Indian_Peacock_tail_feather.jpg)
Shaft of peacock tail feather
![](../I/m/Lacrosse_stick_(The_National_Game_of_Canada).jpg)
Lacrosse stick (the shaft runs from 4 to 5)
![](../I/m/Mine_shaft_towards_window_on_Windows_Walk_in_the_Karangahake_Gorge.jpg)
Mine shaft (looking out)
![](../I/m/KONE_UltraRope_in_elevator_shaft.jpg)
Elevator shaft
Etymology
Old English sceaft, from Proto-Germanic *skaftaz. Cognate with Dutch schacht, German Schaft, Swedish skaft.
Pronunciation
- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /ʃɑːft/
- Rhymes: -ɑːft
- (US) IPA(key): /ʃæft/
Noun
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.
- 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 752825175, page 071:
- 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.
- 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 long, narrow passage sunk into the earth, either natural or for artificial.
- 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.
Usage notes
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
Derived terms
- aftershaft
- airshaft
- angle shaft
- backshaft
- brakeshaft
- camshaft
- clutchshaft
- cockshaft
- countershaft
- crankshaft
- drive shaft
- driveshaft
- elevator shaft
- foreshaft
- get the shaft
- give someone the shaft
- hail shaft
- hairshaft
- jackshaft
- liftshaft
- line shaft
- Microshaft
- midshaft
- propeller shaft
- prop shaft
- propshaft
- shaft alley
- shaft bow
- shaft cave
- shaft encoder
- shaft furnace
- shaftless
- shaftlike
- shaftman
- shaftment
- shaftwork
- spearshaft
- sunshaft
- view shaft
Translations
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
|
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
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.
- 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
slang: to engage in a malicious act
This article is issued from
Wiktionary.
The text is licensed under Creative
Commons - Attribution - Sharealike.
Additional terms may apply for the media files.