shuttle

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.

noun

1. (weaving) A tool used to carry the woof back and forth between the warp threads on a loom.
   Like shuttles through the loom, so swiftly glide My feather'd hours, and all my hopes deride!. 1638, George Sandys, A Paraphrase upon Job
   By placing the sword edgewise, the weaver keeps the countershed open, in order to shoot through the shuttle. 11 November 2013, Claus-Dieter Brauns, “Food and Clothing”, in Mru: Hill People on the Border of Bangladesh, Basel: Birkhäuser, page 131
2. 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. A transport service (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two or more places.
   The shuttle bus runs to the airport on a half-hourly basis form the central station.
   And until December 2010 the northern stretch of the 'Extension' featured a charming side-show: the Chesham Shuttle. … But the people of Chesham moaned about the shuttle: the waiting room at Chalfont & Latimer was too hot, or too cold; there were leaves on the line. … On 12 Dec 2010 the shuttle ceased operations and Metropolitan trains began to terminate at both Amersham and Chesham. 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, pages 76, 77
4. Such a transport vehicle; a shuttle bus; a space shuttle.
   You're saying we take the parking shuttles, reinforce them with aluminum siding and then head to the gun store where our friend Andy plays some cowboy-movie, jump-on-the-wagon bullshit. 2004, Dawn of the Dead, 1:14:20
5. 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).
6. A shuttlecock.
7. A shutter, as for a channel for molten metal.

verb

1. (intransitive) To go back and forth between two places.
2. (transitive) To transport by shuttle or by means of a shuttle service.
   Guests can be shuttled to a from the hotel for no extra cost.