Bible dictionaries

Shaft

What Bible dictionaries say about “Shaft”, one article after the other.

Easton’s Bible Dictionary & Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

Shaft - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

SH'AFT, n. L. scapus; from the root of shape, from setting, or shooting, extending.]

1. An arrow; a missile weapin; as the archer and the shaft.

So loftly was the pile, a Parthian bow

Whith vigor drawn must send the shaft below. Dryden.

2. In mining, a pit or long narrow opening or entrance into a mine. [This may possibly be a different word, as in German it is written schacht, Dan. skaegte.]

3. In architecture, the shaft of a column is the body of it, between the base and the capital.

4. Any thing straight; as the shaft of a steeple, and many other things.

5. The stem or stock of a fether or quill.

6. The pole of a carriage, sometimes called tongue or neap. The thills of a chaise or geg are also called shafts.

7. The handle of a weapon.

Shaft, or white-shaft, a species of Trochilus or humming bird, having a bill twenty lines in levgth, and two long fethers in the middle of its tail.

Matthew George Easton, Easton’s Bible Dictionary; Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828)

The article in Easton + Webster 1828

International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE 1915)

shaft: Isa 49:2 for chets, "an arrow"; also Ex 25:31; 37:17; Nu 8:4 the King James Version for a part of the candlestick of the tabernacle somewhat vaguely designated by the word yarekh, "thigh." The context in the first 2 verses shows that the upright stem or "shaft" is intended, but in Nu 8:4 a different context has caused the Revised Version (British and American) to substitute "base."