Word.ws English Dictionary

shield-toad

shield-toad noun: a turtle or tortoise.

Noun

shield-toad (plural shield-toads)

  1. (nonstandard, rare) A turtle or tortoise.
    • But we already know that a shield-toad is a Frenchman, while the sun is Apollo's shield.2010, Hugh Peter McGrath, Michael Comenetz, Valery's Graveyard
    • For quotations using this term, see Citations:shield-toad.

Forms of shield-toad

pluralshield-toads
alternative formshieldtoad
alternative formshield toad
alternative formshelt-toad
alternative formsheltoad
alternative formshelled toad

Origin of shield-toad

From shield + toad. Compare shellpad, shell-paddock. Compare also West Frisian skyldpod (“tortoise”, literally “shield-toad”), Dutch schildpad (“tortoise”, literally “shield-toad”), German Schildkröte (“tortoise”, literally “shield-toad”), Swedish sköldpadda (“tortoise”), Icelandic sjaldbaka (“turtle”, literally “shield-back”).

Questions about shield-toad

What does shield-toad mean?
Shield-toad means a turtle or tortoise.
What part of speech is shield-toad?
Shield-toad is a noun.
What is the plural of shield-toad?
The plural of shield-toad is shield-toads.

Words near shield-toad in the dictionary

  1. shield-maids
  2. shield-may
  3. shield-mays
  4. shield-skipper
  5. shield-skippers
  6. shield-toad
  7. shield-toads
  8. shield-wall
  9. shield-walls
  10. shieldable
  11. Shieldaig

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shield-toad (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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Cite this entry: “shield-toad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shield-toad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.