Word.ws English Dictionary

human shields

human shields is the plural of human shield.

Meaning of human shield

Noun

human shield (plural human shields)

  1. Civilians which a military group has deliberately placed combat targets near to deter an enemy from attacking those targets.
  2. (figuratively, rhetoric) Third parties used cynically to divert attention away from accusations against oneself.
    • And after the past few days, in which a fleet of Republicans and the president himself have utilized Jews as human shields for racist rhetoric, the Jews are tired, tired, tired of being used as defenses against naked racism, tired of being used to justify conditions at detention camps. Just plain...2019 July 17, Talia Lavin, “When Non-Jews Wield Anti-Semitism as Political Shield”, in GQ

Questions about human shields

What is human shields the plural of?
Human shields is the plural of human shield.

Words near human shields in the dictionary

  1. human seminal plasma protein hypersensitivity
  2. human services
  3. human settlement
  4. human settlements
  5. human shield
  6. human shields
  7. human smuggling
  8. human statue
  9. human statues
  10. human terrain
  11. human terrains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: human shields (page history and authors); human shield (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “human shields.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/human_shields. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.