Other forms: shafts
A shaft is the vertical passage down into a mine. A mine shaft, sink a shaft, down the shaft.
It carries people, ore and air, and ventilation is the reason there are usually at least two — one down and one up. A lift shaft is the same idea in a building. The word also means the long handle of a tool, a spear's stem, and a beam of light. Note that the Old English word meant a pole.
1nounshaftA vertical passage down into a mine.
“The miners were lowered down the shaft in a metal cage.”
2nounlongThe long handle of a tool or a beam of light.
“A shaft of sunlight fell through the window onto the kitchen floor.”
shaft is a passage or a rod.
Old English sceaft means a pole or shaft, from a Germanic root. The senses of handle, mine passage and light beam all follow the shape.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kep-
Proto-Indo-European
*skeh₂p- — club, rod, shaft, staff
Proto-Germanic
*skaftaz — shaft
Proto-West Germanic
*skaft
Old English
sċeaft
Middle English
chafte
English, today
shaft
From Middle English chafte, saft, scaft, schaft, schafte, scheft, shaffet, shaft, from Old English sċeaft, from Proto-West Germanic skaft, from Proto-Germanic skaftaz (“shaft”), from Proto-Indo-European skeh₂p- (“club, rod, shaft, staff”). 2 Cognate with Dutch schacht (“shaft”), German Schaft (“shaft”), Low German Schacht, Skacht (“shaft; cane, stick; beating”), Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish skaft (“handle; stem; shaft”); also Latin scapus (“stalk, stem; shaft”), Greek σκήπτρο (“sceptre”), Albanian shkop (“staff, stick”), be кап'ё (“spear”), Bulgarian ко́пие (“spear”), Czech kopí (“spear”), mk копје (“spear”), Polish kopia (“spear”), Russian копьё (“spear”), Serbo-Croatian ко̏пље, kȍplje (“spear”), Slovak kopija (“spear”), Slovene kopje (“javelin”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA