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, 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.

References

• “shittlecock”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.