shield
/ˈʃild/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.30 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
6
Letters
1
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "Knock go and come; God's vassals drop and die; And sword and shield, In bloody field, Doth win immortal fame."
- "The shields used by our Norman ancestors were the triangular or heater shield, the target or buckler, the roundel or rondache, and the pavais, pavache, or tallevas."
- "My client welcomed the judge […] and they disappeared together into the Ethiopian card-room, which was filled with the assegais and exclamation point shields Mr. Cooke had had made at the sawmill at Beaverton."
- "Beowulf, behind his shield, thrust forth only his right arm."
- "Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."
- "Go muster men. My counsel is my shield; We must be brief when traitors brave the field."
Etymology
From Middle English scheld, shelde, from Old English scield (“shield”), from Proto-West Germanic *skeldu, from Proto-Germanic *skelduz (“shield”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“cut, split”). Cognates Cognate with West Frisian skyld (“shield”), Bavarian Schuid (“shield”), Dutch schild (“shield”), German and Low German Schild (“shield”), Luxembourgish Schëld (“shield”), Yiddish שילד (shild, “shield”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk skjold (“shield”), Elfdalian stjöld (“shield”), Faroese skjøldur (“shield”), Gutnish skiåld (“shield”), Icelandic skjöldur (“shield”), Swedish sköld (“shield”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌻𐌳𐌿𐍃 (skildus, “shield”). Compare Breton skoed (“shield”), Irish sciath (“shield”), Scottish Gaelic sgiath (“shield”), Latin scūtum (“shield”), Latgalian škīda (“shield”), Lithuanian skydas (“shield”), Belarusian шчыт (ščyt, “shield”), Bulgarian, Russian, and Ukrainian щит (ščyt, “shield”), Czech and Slovak štít (“shield”), Macedonian штит (štit, “shield”), Polish szczyt (“shield”), Serbo-Croatian штит, štit, ščit (“shield”), Slovene ščit (“shield”), from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect, split”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *(s)kelH-, scheld, scield, *skeldu, *skelduz, schilden
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈʃild/
- British English: /ˈʃiːld/
Usage
- Obsolete
- Colloquial
- British usage
- Intransitive verb