shuttlecock

Definition

A lightweight object that is conical in shape with a cork or rubber-covered nose, used in badminton the way a ball is used in other racquet games.

Etymology

From 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).

Example Sentences

• "Seven or eight of them, standing in a circle, were engaged in a game of shittlecock. They had in their hands no battledores. They did not employ the hand or arm, any way, in striking it. But, after taking a short race, and springing from the floor, they met the descending shittlecock with the sole of the foot, and drove it up again, with force, high into the air. [...] The shittlecock was made of a piece of dried skin rolled round, and bound with strings. Into this skin were inserted three long feathers spreading out at top, but so near to each other, where they were stuck into the skin, as to pass through the holes, little more than a quarter of an inch square, which are always made in the centre of Cochin-chinese copper coins."
• "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."
• "The practice of the game in this country is to keep the shuttlecock in the air by striking it from one person to another."