Where does the term shuttlecock originate?
Shuttlecock is something that goes back-and-forth and cock refers to a male bird’s (rooster or cockerel) plume of tail feathers. There are some games that use a crudely fashioned shuttlecock which uses feathers that look like a bird’s plume of tail feathers you kick around, just like kicking a soccer ball in the air, without allowing it to drop to the ground.
Once upon a time, in the days of medieval yore, undesirable peasants, slaves and prisoners were herded in carts called “shuttles” during sports fests, to be the cheering crowd for their kings and princes. Now, when the kings and princes were feeling extremely sadistic, they would chop off the sexual organs of the male undesirables (the sexual organs being called “cocks”) and use this as a puck in a racket game similar to the badminton of today. And that is how the term shuttlecock came to be.
