shaft vs spindle

shaft

noun
  • The main axis of a feather. 

  • A vertical or inclined passage sunk into the earth as part of a mine 

  • A vertical passage housing a lift or elevator; a liftshaft. 

  • A beam or ray of light. 

  • Anything cast or thrown as a spear or javelin. 

  • Any column or pillar, particularly the body of a column between its capital and pedestal. 

  • The long, narrow, central body of a spear, arrow, or javelin. 

  • The chamber of a blast furnace. 

  • A ventilation or heating conduit; an air duct. 

  • A relatively small area of precipitation that an onlook can discern from the dry surrounding area. 

  • The main cylindrical part of the penis. 

  • Any long thin object, such as the handle of a tool, one of the poles between which an animal is harnessed to a vehicle, the driveshaft of a motorized vehicle with rear-wheel drive, an axle, etc. 

  • The long narrow body of a lacrosse stick. 

verb
  • To fuck over; to cause harm to, especially through deceit or treachery. 

  • To equip with a shaft. 

  • To fuck; to have sexual intercourse with. 

spindle

noun
  • A long and slender stalk resembling a spindle. 

  • A solid generated by the revolution of a curved line about its base or double ordinate or chord. 

  • Any marine gastropod with a spindle-shaped shell formerly in one of the three invalid genera called Fusus. 

  • The fusee of a watch. 

  • A rotary axis of a machine tool or power tool. 

  • Any marine univalve shell of the genus Tibia; a spindle stromb. 

  • Certain of the species of the genus Euonymus, originally used for making the spindles used for spinning wool. 

  • A rod used for spinning and then winding natural fibres (especially wool), usually consisting of a shaft and a circular whorl positioned at either the upper or lower end of the shaft when suspended vertically from the forming thread. 

  • A yarn measure containing, in cotton yarn, 15,120 yards; in linen yarn, 14,400 yards. 

  • A sleep spindle. 

  • A rod which turns, or on which something turns. 

  • An upright spike for holding paper documents by skewering. 

  • A cytoskeletal structure formed during mitosis 

  • a dragonfly, calque of Swedish slända (dragonfly/spindle), introduced by New Sweden settlers. 

  • A muscle spindle. 

  • A plastic container for packaging optical discs. Bulk blank CDs, DVDs, and BDs are often sold in such a package. 

verb
  • To make into a long tapered shape. 

  • To impale on a device for holding paper documents. 

  • To take on a long tapered shape. 

How often have the words shaft and spindle occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )