Schild

Schild is a German noun with meanings centered on the idea of a shield or protective covering. The primary senses are a shield used for defense in armor, and a sign or plate that marks or identifies something, such as a street sign or a plaque.

In heraldry, the Schild refers to the shield-shaped field of a coat of arms, on which heraldic charges are displayed. The shield is the central element of the arms, and its shape, color, and inscriptions convey symbolic information related to the bearer.

In everyday language, Schild appears in many compound nouns. Straßenschild denotes a street sign, and Warnschild a warning sign. The word also occurs in fixed expressions such as Schutzschild, meaning a protective shield, illustrating the metaphorical extension of the concept. The term is thus connected to the broader notions of protection, boundary, and identification, and can even be found in the name of animals whose shells function as shields, as in Schildkröte for turtle.

Schild is also a common German surname. As a lexical item, it underpins a range of related words and phrases in German, emphasizing the core idea of shielding or marking a boundary.