shuttle
n. countablen. a vehicle that travels regularly between two places. You use it for short, repeated trips, like going from an airport to a hotel.
n. a form of transport that travels regularly back and forth over a specific, relatively short route.
The hotel provides a free shuttle to the airport.
A dedicated shuttle runs every fifteen minutes between the main train station and the university campus.
While the city expanded its subway lines, the local government maintained the bus shuttle to bridge the gap between the residential district and the new industrial park.
From a merger of two words: * Middle English shutel, shotel, schetel, schettell, schyttyl, scutel (“bar; bolt”), from Old English sċyttel, sċutel (“bar; bolt”), equivalent to shut + -le Middle English shutel, schetil, shotil, shetel, schootyll, shutyll, schytle, scytyl (“missile; projectile; spear”), from Old English sċytel, sċutel (“dart, arrow”), from Proto-Germanic skutilaz. The name for a loom weaving instrument, recorded from 1338, is from a sense of being "shot" across the threads. The back-and-forth imagery inspired the extension to "passenger trains" in 1895, aircraft in 1942, and spacecraft in 1969, as well as older terms such as shuttlecock.
Often used as a modifier before another noun, such as 'shuttle bus' or 'shuttle service'.