aspis

English

Vase showing hoplites bearing aspides.

aspis (plural aspides)

A type of round shield borne by ancient Greek soldiers
- 1963, William Kurtz Wimsatt, What to Say About a Poem and Other Essays‎^[1], page 39:
  "shield both large and tough" has never said that aspides are small and weak […]
(archaic) An asp or generic venomous snake
- 1588, Robert Greene, “The History of Dorastus and Fawnia”, in Pandosto: The Triumph of Time‎^[2], published 1907:
  Flesh dipped in the sea Ægeum will never be sweet; the herb Trigion being once bit with an aspis never groweth, and conscience once stained with innocent blood is always tied to a guilty remorse.
(palynology) A prominent ring of thickened exine around a pore on a pollen grain
- 1974, Eugene Cecil Ogden, Manual for Sampling Airborne Pollen‎^[3], →ISBN, page 128:
  As might be expected, characters of the aspides themselves are not of much value in pollen identification, but they are easily recognized and many three-pored, aspidate grains are broadly categorized as "betuloid" in studies of airborne pollen.

(This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Was the Middle Dutch word directly borrowed from Latin?”) From Middle Dutch aspis, (ultimately) from Latin aspis, from Ancient Greek ἀσπίς (aspís).

aspis m (plural aspides or aspides)

aspis m

From Ancient Greek ἀσπίς (aspís, “round shield or asp”).

aspis f (genitive aspidis); third declension

“aspis”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
“aspis”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
aspis in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
“aspis”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
“aspis”, in William Smith, editor (1854, 1857), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography, volume 1 & 2, London: Walton and Maberly
“aspis”, in Richard Stillwell et al., editor (1976), The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

aspis m pl