Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A small, round shield either carried or worn on the arm.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To be a buckler or shield to; support; defend.
  • noun A shield; specifically, a small shield intended to parry blows or thrusts, but not so large as to cover the body.
  • noun Nautical, a piece of wood fitted to stop the hawse-holes of a ship, to prevent the sea from coming in, or to stop the circular hole in a port-lid when the gun is run in. Hawse-bucklers are now made of iron.
  • noun The anterior segment of the carapace or shell of a trilobite.
  • noun A plate on the body or head of a fish; especially, a plate in front of the dorsal fin in various catfishes, or Nematognathi.
  • noun A stage of the molting American blue crab, Callinectes hastatus, when the shell has become nearly hard.
  • noun A piece of beef cut off from the sirloin.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kind of shield, of various shapes and sizes, worn on one of the arms (usually the left) for protecting the front of the body.
  • noun One of the large, bony, external plates found on many ganoid fishes.
  • noun The anterior segment of the shell of trilobites.
  • noun (Naut.) A block of wood or plate of iron made to fit a hawse hole, or the circular opening in a half-port, to prevent water from entering when the vessel pitches.
  • noun (Naut.) a solid buckler.
  • noun (Bot.) a genus of plants (Biscutella) with small bright yellow flowers. The seed vessel on bursting resembles two bucklers or shields.
  • noun a plant with seed vessels shaped like a buckler. See Christ's thorn.
  • noun (Naut.) a buckler with a hole for the passage of a cable.
  • transitive verb obsolete To shield; to defend.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A kind of shield, of various shapes and sizes, worn on one of the arms (usually the left) for protecting the front of the body. In the sword and buckler play of the Middle Ages in England, the buckler was a small shield, used, not to cover the body, but to stop or parry blows.
  • noun obsolete A shield resembling the Roman scutum. In modern usage, a smaller variety of shield is usually implied by this term.
  • noun zoology One of the large, bony, external plates found on many ganoid fishes.
  • noun zoology The anterior segment of the shell of trilobites.
  • noun nautical A block of wood or plate of iron made to fit a hawse hole, or the circular opening in a half-port, to prevent water from entering when the vessel pitches.
  • verb obsolete To shield; to defend.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun armor carried on the arm to intercept blows

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English bokeler, from Old French bouclier, from boucle, boss on a shield, from Latin buccula, diminutive of bucca, cheek.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old French boucler, bucler, from Vulgar Latin *bucculārius ("bossed"), from Latin buccula ("boss").

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word buckler.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

  • "a piece of defensive armour, used by the ancients." (citation in Historical Military Terms list description)

    October 10, 2008