shield
Definitions
General English
- noun a large flat object carried by people such as police officers for protection from attack
- verb to protect someone or something from being reached or seen
General Science
- noun a large area of very old rocks
Computing
- noun a metal screen connected to earth, used to prevent harmful voltages or interference reaching sensitive electronic equipment
- verb to protect a signal or device from external interference or harmful voltages
Construction
- In excavation, a short, hollow section mounted at the heading end of a jacked pipe or tunnel with a front-leaning plane to deter soil inflow.
Electronics
- An enclosure, housing, wall, panel, sheet, projection, or other structure or entity which serves to protect from something.
- A wall or other housing, usually of concrete and/or lead, built around a nuclear reactor to help prevent radiation from escaping. Also, such a shield placed around any source of radiation. Also called shielding (3).
Military
- noun a piece of metal, plastic or other material, which is designed to be held in front of your body as protection from blows or projectiles
- noun anything which is used as a shield
- noun a structure which is fitted to a piece of equipment or machinery, in order to protect the operator from any dangerous effects
- verb to protect a person by placing something between him and a source of danger
Origin & History of “shield”
Shield goes back to a prehistoric Germanic *skelduz, which also produced German and Dutch schild, Swedish sköld, and Danish skjoldr. this was probably derived from the Germanic base *skel- ‘divide, split, separate’ (source also of English scale, shell, etc), and hence denoted etymologically a ‘flat piece of wood produced by splitting a log, board’. Shelter is probably descended from a compound formed from shield.
