shaft – English noun declension

English noun forms of shaft

Noun: shaft
Singularshaft
Pluralshafts

Sample Sentences

  • A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head. [1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus:]
  • Her hand slipped off the javelin's shaft towards the spearpoint and that's why her score was lowered.
  • 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. [1879, R[ichard] J[efferies], chapter II, in The Amateur Poacher, London: Smith, Elder, & Co., […], →OCLC:]
  • […]and the Thunder, / Wing'd with red Lightning and impetuous rage, / Perhaps hath ſpent his ſhafts […] [1667, John Milton, “Book I”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC:]
  • The correction of theſe will reſtore its proper dignity to the ſtudy of antiquities, and cauſe the ſhafts of ridicule, which have been ſucceſsfully thrown at it, to recoil. [1800, Vicesimus Knox, “Essay LXXIV”, in Essays Moral and Literary, volume II, page 100:]
  • Moya and her new friend Mamie have been shrieking appropriate quotations at one another, upstairs and down, for days past. Of course, I didn't see the exact point of the various shafts of wit until now, but this is evidently what was brewing. [1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries:]
  • While Kitto chatted to William, Jessamy looked with interest at the dog cart. It had a pair of high wooden wheels with two seats back to back above. Between the shafts the bay mare tossed her head and fidgeted on the cobbles. [1967, Barbara Sleigh, Jessamy, Sevenoaks, Kent: Bloomsbury, published 1993, →ISBN, page 57:]
  • 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. [2013 July-August, Lee S. Langston, “The Adaptable Gas Turbine”, in American Scientist:]
  • Sarah, if you wear gloves your hands might not slip on your shaft and you can up your game, girl!
  • Isn't that shaft of light from that opening in the cave beautiful?
  • They were a fine company of old women, and a Dutch painter would have loved to find them there together, where the sun made bright patches on the floor and sent long, quivering shafts of gold through the dusky shade up among the rafters. [1912, Willa Cather, The Bohemian Girl::]
  • I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!
  • Your grandfather used to work with a crane hauling ore out of the gold mine's shafts.
  • Darn it, my keys fell through the gap and into the elevator shaft.
  • Our parrot flew into the air duct and got stuck in the shaft.
  • Spirit, that made those heroes dare / To die, or leave their children free / Bid Time and Nature gently spare / The shaft we raise to thee. [1847, R[alph] W[aldo] Emerson, “Hymn […] ”, in Poems, Boston, Mass.: James Munroe and Company, →OCLC, page 251:]
  • The female labia minora is homologous to the penis shaft skin of males.
  • Eight shafts are required to weave this structure. If you have four shafts, you may weave something similar by threading alternate blocks to plain weave and 2/2 basket. [1990, Sharon Alderman, A Handweaver's Notebook, →ISBN, page 93:]
  • I sat on the sofa, got up, changed channels and doubted there'd be time to have a quick shaft and feign an orgasm today. [2012, Najat El Hachmi, The Last Patriarch (page 286)]

Etymology

1. From Middle English chafte, saft, scaft, schaft, schafte, scheft, shaffet, shaft, from Old English sċeaft, from Proto-West Germanic *skaft, from Proto-Germanic *skaftaz (“shaft”), from Proto-Indo-European *skeh₂p- (“club, rod, shaft, staff”).
2. Cognates
3. Cognate with Dutch schacht (“shaft”), German Schaft (“shaft”), Low German Schacht, Skacht (“shaft; cane, stick; beating”), Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish skaft (“handle; stem; shaft”); also Latin scapus (“stalk, stem; shaft”), Greek σκήπτρο (skíptro, “sceptre”), Albanian shkop (“staff, stick”), Belarusian кап'ё (kapʺjó, “spear”), Bulgarian ко́пие (kópie, “spear”), Czech kopí (“spear”), Macedonian копје (kopje, “spear”), Polish kopia (“spear”), Russian копьё (kopʹjó, “spear”), Serbo-Croatian ко̏пље, kȍplje (“spear”), Slovak kopija (“spear”), Slovene kopje (“javelin”).
4. In Early Modern English, shaft referred to the entire body of a long weapon, such that an arrow's “shaft” was composed of its tip, stale, and fletching. Over time, the word came to be used in place of the former stale and lost its original meaning. See: Middle English Nouns 'chafte', Dutch Nouns 'schacht', German Nouns 'Schaft', Latin Nouns 'scapus', Greek Nouns 'σκήπτρο', Belarusan Nouns 'кап'ё', Czech Nouns 'kopí', Polish Nouns 'kopia', Russian Nouns 'копьё', Slovak Nouns 'kopija'.

Verbs referencing "shaft"

Latin Nouns scopa, English Nouns scape, Icelandic Nouns skaft, Latin Nouns scopio, Latin Nouns scipio.