aspides

Noun

aspis (plural aspides)

1. (historical) A type of round shield borne by ancient Greek soldiers.
   • "shield both large and tough" has never said that aspides are small and weak […]1963, William Kurtz Wimsatt, What to Say About a Poem and Other Essays, page 39
2. (archaic) An asp or generic venomous snake
   • Flesh dipped in the sea Ægeum will never be sweet; the herb Trigion being once bit with an aspis never groweth, and conscience once stained with innocent blood is always tied to a guilty remorse.1588, Robert Greene, “The History of Dorastus and Fawnia”, in Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, published 1907
3. A prominent ring of thickened exine around a pore on a pollen grain
   • As might be expected, characters of the aspides themselves are not of much value in pollen identification, but they are easily recognized and many three-pored, aspidate grains are broadly categorized as "betuloid" in studies of airborne pollen.1974, Eugene Cecil Ogden, Manual for Sampling Airborne Pollen, →ISBN, page 128