aspis
/ˈæspɪs/
aspis noun: a type of round shield borne by ancient Greek soldiers.
Noun
aspis (plural aspides)
- 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
- 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
- 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
Forms of aspis
| plural | aspides |
|---|
Origin of aspis
From Ancient Greek ἀσπίς (aspís, “flat bowl shape, shield”).
Words formed from aspis
Questions about aspis
- What does aspis mean?
- Aspis means a type of round shield borne by ancient Greek soldiers.
- What part of speech is aspis?
- Aspis is a noun.
- How do you pronounce aspis?
- Aspis is pronounced /ˈæspɪs/.
- What is the plural of aspis?
- The plural of aspis is aspides.
Words near aspis in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: aspis (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-aspis.ogg.
Cite this entry: “aspis.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/aspis. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.