See Also: Tax shield(money)
Tax shield(finance)
shield(1)(dictionary)
shield(2)(dictionary)
Shield(medicine)
Canadian Shield(encyclopedia)
Shield (as used in expressions)(encyclopedia)
Interest tax shield(finance)
Depreciation tax shield(finance)
human shield(dictionary)

shield(1) (iou)



shield noun1.

I.
A piece of metal, wooden, hard plastic, etc., armour having a circular, oblong, or (esp.) characteristic flat-topped heart shape and strapped on the arm or held in the hand as a protection from blows and missiles. OE.
W. Morris Every man had ready to his hand Sharp spear, and painted shield. Sunday Mirror Half-bricks pound against shaking Perspex shields.
Heraldry. A stylized representation of a shield on which a coat of arms is depicted; a representation of this, a coat of arms. ME.
C. Boutell The well-known Shield of Piers de Gaveston..vert, six eaglets or.
b. A shield-shaped trophy offered as a prize in a sporting etc. competition; such a competition. M19.
M. Spark Every house must go all out for the Shield.
c. A police officer's shield-shaped badge of office. US. E20.
[translating Old French escu.] = eCU. rare. LME-L16.
a. Horticulture. A shield-shaped piece of bark bearing a bud, for grafting between the wood and bark of a stock. L16.
b. Botany. The apothecium of a lichen. Now rare. L18.
A shield-shaped ornamental or functional plate or surface. M17.
J. Ruskin The shield of stone which..occupied the head of early windows.
b. A (breed of) fancy pigeon having shield-shaped wing markings. M19.
(Usu. Shield.) The constellation Scutum. Earliest in SOBIESKI's shield. L18.
Physical Geography.
a. A large seismically stable mass of Archaean basement rock having the form of a flat or gently convex peneplained platform and usu. forming the nucleus of a continent. Freq. with cap. initial in proper names, as Baltic Shield, Canadian Shield. Cf. CRATON, KRATOGEN. E20.
b. The dome of a shield volcano. M20.
II. A thing serving as a protection or shelter.
gen. A thing or person serving as a protection against attack, danger, exposure, etc. ME.
R. W. Emerson No dignity or wealth is a shield from its assault. D. Cecil She hid her true self behind the shield of an aloof formality. Daily Telegraph His..hill-tribe force form the..only credible shield against the North Vietnamese.
The thick tough skin on the sides and flanks of a boar. Also (in full shield of brawn), an article of food consisting of chopped boar's meat moulded inside a piece of this tough skin and cooked. Cf. BRAWN noun 2. Now rare. ME.
A protective screen or cover; spec. (a) one used to guard machinery or machine operators; (b) a machine or structure used in tunnelling, orig. to protect digging workers from roof falls or leaks and now also to bore through soft ground; (c) = dress-shield s.v. DRESS noun; (d) Physics an electrically conducting cover of a device or apparatus intended to protect it from external electric or magnetic fields, or to reduce or eliminate interference radiated by the device or apparatus itself; (e) Physics a mass of material, usu. lead or concrete, intended to absorb neutrons and other ionizing radiation emitted by a reactor or accelerator; (f) Zoology a protective plate on an animal, e.g. the carapace of a turtle or crustacean, the pronotum of an insect; a large scale or scute, esp. on the head of a snake or the carapace of a turtle. E18.
Phrases: gum-shield: see GUM noun1. heat shield: see HEAT noun. Laurentian Shield: see LAURENTIAN adjective1. the other side of the shield = the reverse of the shield s.v. REVERSE noun. the reverse of the shield: see REVERSE noun. two sides of a shield two ways of looking at something, two sides to a question.
Comb.: shield arm the left arm; shield-back adjective (of a chair) having a shield-shaped back; shield-bearer Hist. an attendant who carried a warrior's shield; shield-board (obsolete exc. dial.) = mould-board s.v. MOULD noun1; shield-bud = sense 4a above; shield-budding Botany the operation of grafting a shield; shieldbug Entomology any of various broad flat hemipteran bugs, esp. pentatomids, with a shield-shaped pronotum and scutellum; also called stink-bug; shield cartilage (a) Anatomy = THYROID noun 1; (b) Zoology any of several protective cartilages in the cranium of a cyclostome; shield fern any of various ferns constituting the genus Polystichum, esp. P. aculeatum and P. setiferum, with shield-shaped indusia and sharp pinnules; shield-maid, shield-maiden, shieldmay arch. a female warrior, an Amazon; a Valkyrie; shield-money = SCUTAGE; shield-nose snake, shield snake a venomous southern African elapid snake, Aspidelaps scutatus, with a large shieldlike scute on the snout; shieldtail = shield-tailed snake below; shield-tailed snake any of various blind burrowing snakes of the family Uropeltidae, found in southern India and Sri Lanka, with a flat disc of enlarged scutes on the upper surface of the tail; shield volcano a volcano having the form of a very broad dome with gently sloping sides, characteristic of the eruption of basic lavas of low viscosity.
shieldless adjective LME.
shieldlike adjective resembling a shield in shape M16.