Shelter

How to spell shelter

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shelter

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shelter mean?

1. nounA structure or place that protects people or animals from weather or danger.
2. verbTo protect someone or something from danger, weather, or harm.

Shelter in a sentence

• noun

  The hikers built a rough shelter from branches before the storm hit.

• verb

  The thick hedge helped to shelter the garden from the wind.

• noun

  The city opened an emergency shelter for people sleeping rough during the cold snap.

• verb

  Volunteers offered to shelter the stranded travellers overnight.

Where does shelter come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shelter is something of a puzzle, and most dictionaries label its origin as uncertain. The most widely repeated suggestion is that it grew out of an Old English compound scildtruma, formed from scild meaning 'shield' and truma meaning 'troop' or 'band of soldiers'; the literal sense would then be a protective body of shield-bearers, much like the Roman testudo formation. From that idea of a defensive cover the word is thought to have softened into the general notion of anything that protects from danger or weather. It surfaces in writing only in the middle of the sixteenth century, which is rather late for a word claimed to be so old, and that gap is one reason scholars stay cautious about the story. If the 'shield' connection is genuine, it neatly explains why the spelling keeps the quiet -el- and the -ter ending that catch some writers out. Either way, by Shakespeare's day shelter already carried both the concrete sense of a refuge and the active sense of giving protection.

How the word is built

• shel- (possibly from Old English scild 'shield')
• -ter (noun-forming element, perhaps from truma 'troop, band')