Word.ws English Dictionary

shaft

UK/ˈʃɑːft/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Australia/ˈʃɐːft/

shaft noun: the entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.

Noun

shaft (plural shafts)

  1. (obsolete) The entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
    • A shaft hath three principal parts, the stele, the feathers, and the head.1545, Roger Ascham, Toxophilus
  2. The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin.
    • 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
    Synonyms:
    stale
  3. (broadly) Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
    • […]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
  4. One of the poles between which a draught animal is harnessed to a vehicle.
    • 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
    Synonyms:
    pole, carriage pole
  5. A rotating machine element used to transmit power; a driveshaft
    • 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
  6. The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick.
    • Sarah, if you wear gloves your hands might not slip on your shaft and you can up your game, girl!
  7. (literary) A beam or ray of light.
    • 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
  8. The main axis of a feather.
    • I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!
    Synonyms:
    rachis
  9. A vertical or inclined passage sunk into the earth as part of a mine.
    • Your grandfather used to work with a crane hauling ore out of the gold mine's shafts.
    Synonyms:
    mineshaft
  10. A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator.
    • Darn it, my keys fell through the gap and into the elevator shaft.
    Synonyms:
    liftshaft
  11. A ventilation or heating conduit.
    • Our parrot flew into the air duct and got stuck in the shaft.
    Synonyms:
    airduct
  12. Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pedestal.
    • 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
Show 5 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. The main cylindrical part of the penis.
    • The female labia minora is homologous to the penis shaft skin of males.
  2. The chamber of a blast furnace.
  3. A relatively small area of precipitation that an onlook can discern from the dry surrounding area.
  4. A component of a loom which holds the heddles and is raised by treadles to create the shed.
    • 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
    Synonyms:
    harness
  5. (slang) An act of sexual intercourse.
    • 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)

Verb

shaft (third-person singular simple present shafts, present participle shafting, simple past and past participle shafted)

  1. (slang, transitive) To fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery.
    • Your boss really shafted you by stealing your idea like that.
    • Who can I trust after repeatedly being shafted1992, “Crackers And Cheese”, performed by Eminem
  2. (transitive) To equip with a shaft.
  3. (slang, transitive) To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with.
    • Turns out my roommate was shafting my girlfriend.
    • Which grotesque auld hing-oot will the shrivelled post-menopausal slag want tae shaft? Stay tuned.1994 [1993], Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting, London: Minerva, →ISBN, page 252
    Synonyms:
    Formal terms, bed, coit, coitize, dight, enjoy, feague, go in unto, go to bed with, have

shaft meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

shaft in Hindi

shaft
डंडी ḍaṇḍī

shaft in Tamil

அம்பு, சுழல் தண்டு

shaft in Urdu

تنا

shaft in Bengali

খাদ, বাণ, শর, ক্ষেপণাস্ত্র, শায়ক, দণ্ড
More languagesFewer languages
shaft in Malayalam
കുന്തപ്പിടി, കോൽ, പ്രകാശകിരണം, ശരം
shaft in Kannada
ಮೂಕಿ, ನಡುಕಡ್ಡಿ, ತೋಡುದಾರಿ
shaft in Punjabi
ਤੀਰ tīr, ਤੱਕਲ਼ਾ takkaḷā
shaft in Sanskrit
पुङ्ख puṅkha
shaft in Assamese
ঈহ ih, ডিলা dila
shaft in Tagalog
balaon
shaft in Persian
چوبه čube
shaft in Thai
เพลา plaw, ทูบ tôop

Examples of shaft in a sentence

  • 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:
  • Their fate will be in each other's hands as they decide whether to share... or to shaft.2001, Shafted, spoken by Robert Kilroy-Silk:
  • Stuck with you sponging off her and not even a decent shafting for her trouble.2018, Sarah Phelps, 23:00, in Ordeal by Innocence, episode 2, spoken by Mickey Argyle (Christian Cooke):

All 40 example sentences with shaft

Synonyms of shaft

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of shaft

Forms of shaft

Noun
pluralshafts
Verb
third-person singular presentshafts
present participleshafting
past participleshafted
pastshafted

Plural of shaft: shafts

Origin of shaft

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”). Cognates 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”). 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.

Words formed from shaft

Phrases with shaft

3 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with shaft

Questions about shaft

What does shaft mean?
Shaft means the entire body of a long weapon, such as an arrow.
What is shaft in Hindi?
Shaft in Hindi is डंडी (ḍaṇḍī). See Shaft meaning in Hindi.
How do you use shaft in a sentence?
Of course, I didn't see the exact point of the various shafts of wit until now, but this is evidently what was brewing.
What part of speech is shaft?
Shaft can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce shaft?
Shaft is pronounced /ˈʃɑːft/ (UK).
What is the plural of shaft?
The plural of shaft is shafts.

Words near shaft in the dictionary

  1. Shafiqs
  2. Shafis
  3. Shafran
  4. shafranovskite
  5. Shafrans
  6. shaft
  7. shaft alley
  8. shaft alleys
  9. shaft bow
  10. shaft bows
  11. shaft encoder

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shaft (page history and authors); डंडी (Hindi) (page history and authors); shaft (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shaft (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shaft (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shaft (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shaft (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਤੀਰ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); पुङ्ख (Sanskrit) (page history and authors); ঈহ (Assamese) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shaft.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shaft.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shaft. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.