Wiktionary

pelta

English

edit

Etymology

edit

Latin , a shield, from Ancient Greek πέλτη (péltē, “shield”).

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

pelta (plural peltas or peltae)

  1. (historical) A small shield, especially one of an approximately elliptical form, or crescent-shaped.
    • 1970, John Kinloch Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, page 112:
      Xenophon also mentions bronze peltae, but probably (like hoplite shields) they were only faced with a thin covering of bronze.
    • 1992, Guy Michael Hedreen, Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase-painting: Myth and Performance:
      The other subject illustrated in these scenes of silens carrying peltas appears to be a battle.
    • 2004, Tim Everson, Warfare in Ancient Greece: Arms and Armour from the Heroes of Homer to Alexander the Great:
      After the Celtic invasion of Greece and the subsequent removal of some Celts (the Galatians) to Asia Minor in the 270s, Greek light troops seem to have stopped using the pelta, and adopted instead the large, oval Celtic shield with a central spine.
  2. (art, historical) A crescent-shaped design used in mosaics.
    • 1960, Saul S. Weinberg, The Southeast Building, the Twin Basilicas, the Mosaic House:
      A pattern of red and blue peltae on a white ground, arranged in groups of four with two peltae placed back to back and one at each end facing inward, forms the outer border on the east side of the mosaic.
    • 2006, Anna Maria Giusti, Pietre Dure: The Art of Semiprecious Stonework:
      Evidently it was a deliberate choice to select from the repertory of opus sectile, often extremely figurative, only those decorative motifs that were amenable to sixteenth-century architectural classicism, like the peltae on the Farnese tables, which were still used for the seventeenth-century pavement of the Confessio of St Peter's.
    • 2009, David S. Neal, Roman Mosaics of Britain: South-East Britain, page 424:
      Surrounding the square frame of round-tongued double guilloche is a broad white band with large lozenges (two on each side), outlined dark grey, with their acute angles terminating in voluted peltae with undulating spurs on their roundels.
  3. (botany) A flat apothecium with no rim.
    • 1907, Gardeners Chronicle & New Horticulturist, page 3:
      The calyx is composed of five linear spreading sepals J inch long and attached to the sides of the inferior ovary are four bracts, two of which, the anterior and posterior, remain abortive, whilst the two lateral ones develop into large rounded flattened discs (peltae) attached at the centre.
  4. (microbiology) A crescent-shaped sheet of microtubules that encircles the base of the flagella of a protozoan.
    • 1991, Michael A. Sleigh, Protozoa and Other Protists, page 116:
      A striated parabasal fibre is closely associated with a large parabasal golgi system; a dense pre-axostylar fibre connects to the axostyle, which is a curved sheet of microtubules that encloses the nucleus and extends to (or protrudes from) the posterior end of the cell; the same pre-axostylar fibre links to the pelta, which is a sheet of microtubules that curves around within a sort of collar that encloses the flagellar bases before turning back to meet the axostyle […]
    • 2010, W. de Souza, Structures and Organelles in Pathogenic Protists, page 16:
      The pelta is a crescent-shaped sheet also formed by microtubules, and it overlaps with the axostyle in the anterior region of the cell. The pelta supports the wall of the anterior region of the cell and the flagellar canal from which the flagella emerges.
    • 2012, Michael Melkonian, The Cytoskeleton of Flagellate and Ciliate Protists, page 86:
      The anterior semi-circular pelta surrounds the basal body area and the axostyle forms the longitudinal axis of the cell.
edit

Anagrams

edit

French

edit

Noun

edit

pelta f (plural peltas)

  1. pelte

Italian

edit

Etymology

edit

Borrowed from Latin pelta, from Ancient Greek πέλτη (péltē).

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

pelta f (plural pelte)

  1. (historical) pelta (shield)
    Hypernym: scudo
edit

Further reading

edit
  • pelta in Treccani.it – Vocabolario Treccani on line, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana

Anagrams

edit

Latin

edit
 
A peltast carrying a pelte shield (pelta)

Etymology

edit

From Ancient Greek πέλτη (péltē).

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

pelta f (genitive peltae); first declension

  1. a small crescent-shaped shield of Thracian design.

Declension

edit

First-declension noun.

singular plural
nominative pelta peltae
genitive peltae peltārum
dative peltae peltīs
accusative peltam peltās
ablative peltā peltīs
vocative pelta peltae
edit

References

edit
  • “pelta”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “pelta”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • pelta in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
  • pelta in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
  • “pelta”, in Harry Thurston Peck, editor (1898), Harper's Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • “pelta”, in William Smith et al., editor (1890), A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, London: William Wayte. G. E. Marindin

Spanish

edit
 
Spanish Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia es

Pronunciation

edit
  • IPA(key): /ˈpelta/ [ˈpel̪.t̪a]
  • Rhymes: -elta
  • Syllabification: pel‧ta

Noun

edit

pelta f (plural peltas)

  1. This term needs a translation to English. Please help out and add a translation, then remove the text {{rfdef}}.

Further reading

edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=pelta&oldid=80253062"
  NODES
Note 1