shuttlecock n : badminton equipment consisting of a ball of cork or rubber with a crown of feathers [syn: bird, birdie, shuttle] v : send or toss to and fro, like a shuttlecock

English

Pronunciation

Etymology

shuttle (from the back-and-forth sense of the word originating with loom weaving) + cock (from resemblance to a male bird's plume of tail feathers). Attested from 1522.

Noun

1. In the context of "badminton": A lightweight object that is conical in shape with a cork or rubber-covered nose, used in badminton as a ball is used in other racquet games.
   • 1859, Ebenezer Landells, The boy's own toy-maker, page 122,

     The practice of the game in this country is to keep the shuttlecock in the air by striking it from one person to another.

Quotations

• 1696, Pierre Nicole, Moral Essayes, Contain'd in Several Treatises on Many Important Duties, page 237,

  It is a Veſſel which muſt be filled with Sand to ballance it, otherwiſe it will overturn, and become the Shuttlecock of all ſort of Winds.

• 1851 — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, ch 123

  In a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock to the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the compasses, at intervals, go round and round.

• 1897 — Henry James, What Maisie Knew, Ch. 2

  Crudely as they had calculated they were at first justified by the event: she was the little feathered shuttlecock they could fiercely keep flying between them.

• 1906 — Edith Nesbit, The Railway Children, ch 11

  Bobbie burned the feathers of the shuttlecock one by one under his nose,

• 1997, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff (trans.), Marcel Proust (auth.), Swann's Way, page 460,

  ... in front of which a little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock;

Synonyms

• birdie

Translations

Related terms

• battledore and shuttlecock

Verb

1. to move or be moved rapidly back-and-forth