Hield

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Dialect verb meaning to shelter or protect someone from the weather ; an old past-tense form of the verb to hold, meaning grasped or kept
2. Chiefly Scots term for sheltering or guarding from wind and rain ; a former past form of hold, used in older English verse
3. To give shelter against the elements in Scottish speech ; an antiquated spelling of the past tense of hold, once common in poetry

Etymology: "Hield" is a word that has split into two unrelated-looking senses, and the surprise is that both trace back to a single Old English verb meaning "to lean" or "to tilt." That verb, hieldan, meant to incline, bow, or bend downward, and it is related to the modern English "heel" in the sense of tilting a ship over. Its forms in other Germanic languages preserve the same idea: Dutch "hellen" and Swedish "hälla" both mean to tilt, and the latter also means to pour, as if tipping a vessel. The past-tense sense of "hold" comes from a different Old English word, healdan, which meant to keep or grasp, and "hield" is an older past form of that verb. The dialect sense of sheltering someone from weather is a separate development. It seems to draw on the idea of leaning something over or against a person to keep them out of the rain, though the exact path from "lean" to "shelter" is not fully traced.

Synonyms: shelter, shield, protect, guard, cover

Antonyms: expose