shield wall

English

Etymology

See Old English sċieldweall, with the same meaning.

Noun

shield wall (plural shield walls)

  1. A defensive formation, used from antiquity through the early Middle Ages, in which soldiers stand shoulder to shoulder with their shields overlapping, creating a continuous barrier against enemy attack.
  2. (figurative) An impenetrable barrier.
    • 1999, Seamus Heaney, “Introduction”, in Beowulf, London: Faber and Faber, page xii:
      Still, in spite of the sensation of being caught between a ‘shield-wall’ of opaque references and a ‘word-hoard’ that is old and strange, such readers are also bound to feel a certain ‘shock of the new’.

Translations

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