Word.ws English Dictionary

scutum

/ˈskjuːtəm/

scutum noun: an oblong shield made of boards or wickerwork covered with leather, with sometimes an iron rim; carried chiefly by the heavily armed infantry of the Roman army.

scutum: an oblong shield made of boards or wickerwork covered with leather, with sometimes an iron rim;...
Image: Alan R Walker, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

scutum (plural scuta or scutums)

  1. (Roman, historical) An oblong shield made of boards or wickerwork covered with leather, with sometimes an iron rim; carried chiefly by the heavily armed infantry of the Roman army.
    Synonyms:
    tower shield
  2. A scute.
  3. A shield-like protection, such as the scutum protecting the back of a hard tick (cf. alloscutum, conscutum).
    • A tick's eye, if present, is a mere roundish lucent area at the margin of the scutum about opposite the second coxa.2009, Dwight D. Bowman, Georgis' Parasitology for Veterinarians
  4. One of the two lower valves of the operculum of a barnacle.
  5. The kneecap.

Proper noun capitalized: Scutum

Scutum

  1. A small autumn constellation of the northern sky, said to resemble a shield. It lies between the constellations of Aquila, Sagittarius, and the tail of Serpens.

scutum meaning in Tamil

scutum in Tamil

கேடயம், ஸ்கூட்டம்

Synonyms of scutum

Forms of scutum

pluralscuta
pluralscutums

Origin of scutum

Borrowed from Latin scūtum (“shield”). Doublet of escudo, scudo, scute, and écu.

Named by the astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687, from Latin scūtum (“shield”). The original name given was Scutum Sobiescianum (Sobieski's Shield) in commemoration of the victory of the Polish, Austrian, and German forces led by the Polish king Jan III Sobieski at the battle of Vienna.

Words formed from scutum

  • Scuti

Questions about scutum

What does scutum mean?
Scutum means an oblong shield made of boards or wickerwork covered with leather, with sometimes an iron rim; carried chiefly by the heavily armed infantry of the Roman army.
What is scutum in Tamil?
Scutum in Tamil is கேடயம், ஸ்கூட்டம். See Scutum meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is scutum?
Scutum can be a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce scutum?
Scutum is pronounced /ˈskjuːtəm/.
What is the plural of scutum?
The plural of scutum is scuta.

Words near scutum in the dictionary

  1. scuttock
  2. scuttocks
  3. Scutts
  4. scutula
  5. scutulum
  6. scutum
  7. scutums
  8. scutwork
  9. scuz
  10. scuzz
  11. scuzz bucket

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: scutum (page history and authors); Scutum (page history and authors); scutum (Tamil Wiktionary) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-scutum.wav.

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