Shield
nounA broad piece of protective equipment, or anything that guards against harm.
How to spell shield
6 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce shield
What does shield mean?
- nounA broad piece of protective equipment, or anything that guards against harm.
- verbTo protect someone or something from danger, harm, or unpleasant exposure.
Shield in a sentence
-
noun
The knight raised his shield to block the blow.
-
verb
Managers should not shield poor performers from honest feedback.
-
noun
A heat shield protects the engine from the exhaust.
-
verb
Thick curtains shield the room from the afternoon glare.
Where does shield come from?
Language of origin: Germanic
The word descends from the Old English scield, meaning a flat board or plate carried for protection in battle. That noun goes back to a Proto-Germanic root scelduz, related to a verb meaning 'to cut' or 'to split', because the earliest shields were boards split or cut from wood. The same ancestral root surfaces in the Dutch schild and the German Schild, which still mean 'shield' or 'sign-board' today. Over the centuries the spelling shifted from scield through Middle English schelde to the modern shield, but the silent-feeling 'ie' vowel preserves its long history. From the literal piece of armour the meaning broadened to anything that guards or screens, and a verb sense 'to protect' grew naturally alongside the noun.
How the word is built
- shield (from Old English scield: a board or plate of defence); single root, no affixes
Fix your spelling for good.
Spelling Garden finds the words you personally get wrong, plants them in a garden, and brings each one back just before you would have forgotten it.
Just five minutes a day is all it takes to fix your spelling.