Shaft

1. a long pole forming the body of various weapons, as lances, halberds, or arrows. 2. something directed or barbed as in sharp attack: shafts of sarcasm. 3. a ray or beam: a shaft of sunlight. 4. a long, comparatively straight handle serving as an important or balancing part of an implement or device, as of a hammer, ax, golf club, or other implement. 5. Machinery. a rotating or oscillating round, straight bar for transmitting motion and torque, usually supported on bearings and carrying gears, wheels, or the like, as a propeller shaft on a ship, or a drive shaft of an engine. 6. a flagpole. 7. Architecture. that part of a column or pier between the base and capital. any distinct, slender, vertical masonry feature engaged in a wall or pier and usually supporting or feigning to support an arch or vault. 8. a monument in the form of a column, obelisk, or the like. 9. either of the parallel bars of wood between which the animal drawing a vehicle is hitched. 10. any well-like passage or vertical enclosed space, as in a building: an elevator shaft. 11. Mining. a vertical or sloping passageway leading to the surface. 12. Botany. the trunk of a tree. 13. Zoology. the main stem or midrib of a feather. 14. Also called leaf. Textiles. the harness or warp with reference to the pattern of interlacing threads in weave constructions (usually used in combination): an eight-shaft satin. 15. the part of a candelabrum that supports the branches.