Other forms: shoulders, shouldered, shouldering
Your shoulder is the joint where your arm meets your body, and the broad flat part on top of it. A bag strap sits there. A sleeping child sits there. You rub one when you have slept badly, and you shrug both when you have no answer.
A shoulder of lamb or pork is the cut of meat from the same place on the animal. On a motorway, the hard shoulder is the strip at the edge where you pull over when the engine dies. As a verb, to shoulder something is to take its weight: you shoulder a rucksack, and you shoulder the blame, the cost or the responsibility. You can also shoulder your way through a crowd. The word holds more fixed phrases than almost any other body part: a shoulder to cry on, the cold shoulder, shoulder to shoulder, looking over your shoulder.
1nounshoulderThe joint where the arm joins the body, and the flat area above it.~92%
“She hauled the bag onto her shoulder and set off up the hill.”
2nouncutA cut of meat from the upper front leg of an animal.~2%
“A shoulder of lamb needs four hours in a low oven.”
3nounstripThe strip of ground or paving at the edge of a road.~2%
“The car limped onto the hard shoulder with steam coming off the bonnet.”
4verbtakeTo take on a burden, cost or responsibility.~2%
“He shouldered the blame for a decision he had argued against.”
5verbpushTo push with the shoulder.~2%
“She shouldered the door open with her arms full of shopping.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 17 sentences found in the wild and placed 17 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
shoulder is a joint of the body.
Shoulder is old and homegrown: Old English sċuldor, from Proto-West Germanic skuldru, with cousins across the North Sea in Dutch schouder and German Schulter. Where it came from before that is uncertain. One suggestion links it to the Proto-Germanic word for shield, skelduz, on the grounds that the shoulder blade is flat and broad like one.
Proto-Germanic
*skelduz — shield
Proto-West Germanic
*skuldru — shoulder
Old English
sċuldra
Middle English
schuldre
English, today
shoulder
Built from
From Middle English schuldre, sholder, shulder, schulder, from Old English sċuldra, sċuldor (“shoulder”), from Proto-West Germanic skuldru (“shoulder”), of uncertain origin. Perhaps related to Proto-Germanic skelduz (“shield”), see shield. Cognate with Old Frisian skuldere (“shoulder”) (West Frisian skouder (“shoulder”)), Middle Low German scholder (“shoulder”), Low German Schuller, Schulder (“shoulder”), Dutch schouder (“shoulder”), German Schulter (“shoulder”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA