shuttle

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A device used in weaving to carry the woof thread back and forth between the warp threads.
2. n. A device for holding the thread in tatting and netting and in a sewing machine.
3. n. Regular travel back and forth over an established, often short route by a vehicle.
4. n. A vehicle used in such travel: took the shuttle across town.
5. n. A route used by a vehicle in such travel: the Washington-New York air shuttle.
6. n. A space shuttle.
7. n. Travel between disputing parties by a diplomatic intermediary.
8. v. To go, move, or travel back and forth by or as if by a shuttle: business people who shuttle between European capitals.
9. v. To cause to move back and forth frequently.
10. v. To transport by or as if by a shuttle: shuttle a scientific payload to an orbiting space station.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A bolt or bar, as of a door.
2. n. An instrument used by weavers for passing or shooting the thread of the weft from one side of the web to the other between the threads of the warp. The modern shuttle is a sort of wooden carriage tapering at each end, and hollowed out in the middle for the reception of the bobbin or pirn on which the weft is wound. The weft unwinds from this bobbin as the shuttle runs from one side of the web to the other. It is driven across by a smart blow from a pin called a picker or driver. There is one of these pins on each side of the loom, and the two are connected by a cord to which a handle is attached. Holding this handle in his right hand, the weaver moves the two pins together in each direction alternately by a sudden jerk. A shuttle propelled in this manner is called a fly-shuttle, and was invented in 1738 by John Kay, a mechanic of Colchester, England. Before this invention the weaver took the shuttle between the finger and thumb of each hand alternately and threw it across, by which process much time was lost. There are also a great variety of automatic picker-motions for driving the shuttles of looms. Compare picker-motion.
3. n. In sewing-machines, the sliding thread-holder which carries the lower thread between the needle and the upper thread to make a lockstitch. See cuts under sewing-machine.
4. n. The gate which opens to allow the water to flow on a water-wheel.
5. n. One of the sections of a shutter-dam.
6. n. A small gate or stop through which metal is allowed to pass from the trough to the mold.
7. n. A shuttlecock; also, the game known as shuttlecock.
8. To move to and fro like a shuttle.
9. To go back and forth like a shuttle; travel to and fro.
10. Headlong; rash; thoughtless; unsteady; volatile.
11. Slippery, sliding.

Wiktionary

1. n. The part of a loom that carries the woof back and forth between the warp threads
2. n. A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two places.
3. n. 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).
4. v. intransitive To go back and forth between two places.
5. v. transitive To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. An instrument used in weaving for passing or shooting the thread of the woof from one side of the cloth to the other between the threads of the warp.
2. n. 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.
3. n. rare A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.
4. v. To move backwards and forwards, like a shuttle.

WordNet 3.0

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