English
Image:Volant badminton.jpg|thumb|A shuttlecock.
Pronunciation
audio|en-us-shuttlecock.ogg|Audio (US)
Etymology
term|shuttle (from the back-and-forth sense of the word originating with loom weaving) + term|cock (from resemblance to a male bird's plume of tail feathers). Attested from 1522.
Noun
en-noun
- context|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 � w:Herman Melville|Herman Melville, s:Moby-Dick|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 � w:Henry James|Henry James, s:What Maisie Knew|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 � w:Edith Nesbit|Edith Nesbit, s:The Railway Children|The Railway Children, ch 11
:Bobbie burned the feathers of the shuttlecock one by one under his nose,
1997, C. K. Scott-Moncrieff (trans.), w:Marcel Proust|Marcel Proust (auth.), Swann's Way, page 460,
:... in front of which a little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock;
Synonyms
sense|lightweight object used in badminton birdie
Translations
trans-top|A lightweight object used in badminton.
Dutch: shuttle m
Finnish: sulkapallo
trans-mid
German: Federball m
trans-bottom
Related terms
battledore and shuttlecock
Verb
en-verb
#to move or be moved rapidly back-and-forth
fa:shuttlecock
io:shuttlecock
ru:shuttlecock
vi:shuttlecock
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