English

Vase showing hoplites bearing aspides.

Noun

aspis ‎(plural aspides)

1. A type of round shield borne by ancient Greek soldiers
   • 1963, William Kurtz Wimsatt, What to Say About a Poem and Other Essays, page 39:

     "shield both large and tough" has never said that aspides are small and weak […]

2. (archaic) An asp or generic venomous snake
   • 1588, Robert Greene, “The History of Dorastus and Fawnia”, in Pandosto: The Triumph of Time, 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.

3. (palynology) A prominent ring of thickened exine around a pore on a pollen grain
   • 1974, Eugene Cecil Ogden, Manual for Sampling Airborne Pollen, ISBN 0028498208, 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.

Coordinate terms

• (type of shield): hoplon
• (ring of exine): annulus

Derived terms

• aspidate

Anagrams

• apsis

French

Noun

aspis m

1. plural of aspi

Latin

Etymology

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

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈas.pis/, [ˈas.pɪs]

Noun

aspis f ‎(genitive aspidis); third declension

1. asp (venomous snake)
2. viper

Inflection

Third declension.

References

• 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
• Félix Gaffiot (1934), “aspis”, in Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Paris: 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