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The name for a loom weaving instrument, recorded from 1338, is from a sense of being "shot" across the threads. The back-and-forth imagery inspired the extension to "passenger trains" in 1895, aircraft in 1942, and spacecraft in 1969, as well as older terms such as shuttlecock.
Like shuttles through the loom, so swiftly glide My feather'd hours, and all my hopes deride!.
2013 November 11, Claus-Dieter Brauns, “Food and Clothing”, in Mru: Hill People on the Border of Bangladesh, Basel: Birkhäuser, page 131:
By placing the sword edgewise, the weaver keeps the countershed open, in order to shoot through the shuttle.
The sliding thread holder in a sewing machine, which carries the lower thread through a loop of the upper thread, to make a lock stitch.
A transportservice (such as a bus or train) that goes back and forth between two or more places.
The shuttle bus runs to the airport on a half-hourly basis from the central station.
2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, pages 76, 77:
And until December 2010 the northern stretch of the 'Extension' featured a charming side-show: the CheshamShuttle. [...] But the people of Chesham moaned about the shuttle: the waiting room at Chalfont & Latimer was too hot, or too cold; there were leaves on the line. [...] On 12 Dec 2010 the shuttle ceased operations and Metropolitan trains began to terminate at both Amersham and Chesham.
You're saying we take the parking shuttles, reinforce them with aluminum siding and then head to the gun store where our friend Andy plays some cowboy-movie, jump-on-the-wagon bullshit.
Any other item that moves repeatedly back and forth between two positions, possibly transporting something else with it between those points (such as, in chemistry, a molecular shuttle).
In its original sense, a shuttle goes back and forth between two places. The term is also used in a broader sense for short-haul transport that may be one-way or have multiple stops (including shared ride or loop), particularly for airport buses; compare loose usage of limousine. It is also often used to describe a rail replacement bus service, or a rail service that does not run the full length of the normal route forcing passengers to transfer, regardless of the number of stops.
1982 April 24, Larry Goldsmith, “Freedom of Information: A Heterosexual Privilege?”, in Gay Community News, page 6:
On several occasions during the next several months my attempts to see the logs were met alternately with this denial of their existence or a denial of my right to see them. After being shuttled from station to headquarters and headquarters to station, I finally consulted with GCNs attorney, John Ward.
