pelta

Noun

pelta (plural peltas or peltae)

1. (historical) A small shield, especially one of an approximately elliptical form, or crescent-shaped.
   • Xenophon also mentions bronze peltae, but probably (like hoplite shields) they were only faced with a thin covering of bronze.1970, John Kinloch Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, page 112
   • The other subject illustrated in these scenes of silens carrying peltas appears to be a battle.1992, Guy Michael Hedreen, Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase-painting: Myth and Performance
2. (historical) A crescent-shaped design used in mosaics.
   • A pattern of red and blue peltae on a white ground, arranged in groups of four with two peltae placed back to back and one at each end facing inward, forms the outer border on the east side of the mosaic.1960, Saul S. Weinberg, The Southeast Building, the Twin Basilicas, the Mosaic House
   • Evidently it was a deliberate choice to select from the repertory of opus sectile, often extremely figurative, only those decorative motifs that were amenable to sixteenth-century architectural classicism, like the peltae on the Farnese tables, which were still used for the seventeenth-century...2006, Anna Maria Giusti, Pietre Dure: The Art of Semiprecious Stonework
3. A flat apothecium with no rim.
   • The calyx is composed of five linear spreading sepals J inch long and attached to the sides of the inferior ovary are four bracts, two of which, the anterior and posterior, remain abortive, whilst the two lateral ones develop into large rounded flattened discs (peltae) attached at the centre.1907, Gardeners Chronicle & New Horticulturist, page 3
4. A crescent-shaped sheet of microtubules that encircles the base of the flagella of a protozoan.
   • A striated parabasal fibre is closely associated with a large parabasal golgi system; a dense pre-axostylar fibre connects to the axostyle, which is a curved sheet of microtubules that encloses the nucleus and extends to (or protrudes from) the posterior end of the cell; the same pre-axostylar...1991, Michael A. Sleigh, Protozoa and Other Protists, page 116
   • The pelta is a crescent-shaped sheet also formed by microtubules, and it overlaps with the axostyle in the anterior region of the cell. The pelta supports the wall of the anterior region of the cell and the flagellar canal from which the flagella emerges.2010, W. de Souza, Structures and Organelles in Pathogenic Protists, page 16