Word.ws English Dictionary

shieldmaiden

shieldmaiden noun: a female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.

Noun

shieldmaiden (plural shieldmaidens)

  1. (Norse) A female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.
    • The shield-maiden (skölde-mö) was dedicated to Odin, and forbidden to wed; her love brought calamity.1845 [1832–1836], Erik Gustaf Geijer, translated by J. H. Turner, The History of the Swedes, London: Whittaker and Co., Ave Maria Lane, translation of Svenska folkets historia (in Swedish), page 33
    • The Anglosaxon belief in the Shieldmaidens comes to us indeed in a darkened form, yet we can hardly doubt that it survived.1849, John Mitchell Kemble, The Saxons in England

Examples of shieldmaiden in a sentence

  • Störkud rushed through the ranks with a drawn sword and killed one after another; he cut down Hjört; whereupon Visma, shieldmaiden, who carried the standard of Harald, met him.1890, Paul Belloni Du Chaillu, The Viking Age: The Early History, Manners, and Customs of the Ancestors of the English-speaking Nations...
  • There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North!1955, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King, →ISBN, page 262:

Synonyms of shieldmaiden

Forms of shieldmaiden

pluralshieldmaidens
alternative formshield-maiden
alternative formshield maiden

Origin of shieldmaiden

From shield + maiden. Calque from Old Norse skjaldmær (“shieldmaiden”).

Questions about shieldmaiden

What does shieldmaiden mean?
Shieldmaiden means a female virgin who had chosen to fight as a warrior in battle.
How do you use shieldmaiden in a sentence?
Störkud rushed through the ranks with a drawn sword and killed one after another; he cut down Hjört; whereupon Visma, shieldmaiden, who carried the standard of Harald, met him.
What part of speech is shieldmaiden?
Shieldmaiden is a noun.
What is the plural of shieldmaiden?
The plural of shieldmaiden is shieldmaidens.

Words near shieldmaiden in the dictionary

  1. shieldingly
  2. shieldings
  3. shieldless
  4. shieldlike
  5. shieldmaid
  6. shieldmaiden
  7. shieldmaidens
  8. shieldmaids
  9. shieldmaker
  10. shieldmakers
  11. shieldman

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shieldmaiden (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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