shittlecock

shittlecock

English

Noun

shittlecock (countable and uncountable, plural shittlecocks)

1. Obsolete spelling of shuttlecock (“the game or the object”)
   • 1621, Thomas Middleton, Women Beware Women

     What's the next business after shittlecock, now?

   • 1751, John Marchant, Puerilia: or, Amusements for the young, consisting of a collection of songs, page 54:

     Shittlecock toss'd to and fro, Diverts us, and warms the chill Blood […]

   • 1797, George Staunton, “Cochin-china”, in An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China; […] In Two Volumes, […], volume I, London: […] G[eorge] Nicol, […], OCLC 681134772, page 339:

     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.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for shittlecock in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913)