shuttlecock

Etymology

It is formed from English shuttle + cock,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} though Etymonline takes the first part from the verb rather than the noun.^[7] Shuttle is from Middle English shitel (“missile; weaver's instrument”), from Old English scytel (“dart, arrow”),^[7] which the OED and Ayto trace to the Germanic root of shoot.^[2][8] Cock, the bird according to Merriam-Webster Unabridged,^[3] is from Old English cocc (“male bird”).^[7] Cresswell says that the word was originally shuttle-cork, from shuttle and cork,^[9] but the OED records the form shuttle-cork only from before 1627, as a later variant beside it.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A piece of cork fitted with feathers, for hitting back and forth: before 1529, in Skelton's Why Come Ye Nat to Courte.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives 1522 as the first known use,^[3] Dictionary.com 1515–25,^[6] and Etymonline only the 1570s.^[7]

Semantic evolution

The game itself, in full battledore and shuttlecock, could be called by this name from 1601, in Jonson.^[2] Cresswell dates the name of the game to the early 16th century and explains that a more competitive version brought back from India by army officers in the 19th century became popular in English country houses, as badminton.^[9] The OED, in an entry first published in 1914, says that the older game was by then played only by children.^[2] The word also became figurative for anything tossed about: from 1602 in Dekker as a noun,^[2][5] and as an adjective meaning light, fickle or bandied about from the mid 16th century.^[4][3] The verb, to toss back and forth, is recorded from 1687,^[2][3] and the intransitive verb, to move back and forth, from 1790, in Horace Walpole's letters.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined the noun as a cork stuck with feathers and beaten backward and forward.^[10]

Timeline

• before 1529 – a feathered cork, hit back and forth.^[2] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates it to 1522.^[3]
• mid 16th century – adjective, light, fickle.^[4]
• 1601 – the game of battledore and shuttlecock.^[2]
• 1602 – used figuratively.^[2]
• 1687 – verb, to toss or send back and forth.^[2][3]
• 1790 – verb, to move back and forth.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A light cone made of cork and feathers, or of plastic, that is struck over the net in badminton and in battledore; also called a shuttle or birdie.^[5][3][2]
2. The game of battledore and shuttlecock.^[3][2]
3. Anything passed back and forth, as in an argument.^[5][2]
4. The gadwall, a duck.^[3]

Verb

1. To send or toss back and forth; to bandy: The two offices shuttlecocked the complaint for months.^[5][3][2]
2. To move or go back and forth.^[5][3][2]

Adjective

1. Tossed here and there; variable or fickle.^[3][4]

Related words

• shuttle
• cock
• shoot

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b c d Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b c d e f Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
6. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
9. ^ a b Cresswell, Julia (2021), Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.