shaft
/ˈʃæft/ noun C1- 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.
- Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin.
- One of the poles between which a draught animal is harnessed to a vehicle.
- A rotating machine element used to transmit power; a driveshaft
- 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!
- A beam or ray of light. · Isn't that shaft of light from that opening in the cave beautiful?
- The main axis of a feather. · I had no idea that they removed the feathers' shafts to make the pillows softer!
- 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.
Plural shafts
From the library
Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Anne’s stormy bosom, Marilla descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul.
The shaft into which the river hurls itself is an immense chasm, lined by glistening coal-black rock, and narrowing into a creaming, boiling pit of incalculable depth, which brims over and shoots the stream onward over its jagged lip.
It had darkened since I left, and now I could only see here and there the glistening of moisture upon the black walls, and far away down at the end of the shaft the gleam of the broken water.
A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine.
Other matches
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