helmet
Pluralhelmets
Verbhelmets, helmeting, helmeted
Pluralhelmets
Formshelmets, helmeting, helmeted
- 1A hard protective covering for the head, often forming part of a suit of armor.
The soldier's steel helmet deflected the blow.
Medieval knights wore helmets crafted from iron plates.
Similarhelm
Note
The word began as a diminutive: Old French helmet was a little helm, from helme, a word of Germanic origin that also gave Old English helm. Since the 15th century helmet has largely displaced helm as the everyday word, leaving helm to archaic and poetic use. It moves easily from armor to sport, as with speedboarders, and even to a sleek hairstyle: Margery Allingham gives a character hair like a black silk helmet.
- 2To cover with a helmet, or with something that works like one.
Soldiers helmet their heads before entering the battlefield.
The engineers helmeted the sensor to shield it from flying debris.
Note
The verb is spelled two ways: helmeting and helmeted, or with a doubled t, helmetting and helmetted. Walter Adolphe Roberts chose the doubled form in 1917 when France "helmetted her hair." The figurative use is lively. In Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun (2014), fleeing figures run with their arms helmetting their heads, so anything held over the head as cover can do the work.
- 3Anything that resembles a helmet, whether in its shape, its position, or in some other respect.
Years of hairspray had set her silver curls into a stiff, unmoving helmet.
The chapel's bell tower ends in a rounded copper helmet, green with age.
Note
Several of the word's specialized meanings are particular cases of this open, figurative one: the hooded upper part of monkshood and snapdragon flowers, the bare shield on some birds' heads, the top of a chemist's retort. The likeness can lie in shape or in position, so a thing can earn the name simply by sitting on top and covering. Beyond those set uses the comparison stays free, and the verb has the same 'as if' reach.
- 4
- 5A contemptible or stupid person, used as a mild insult.
Only a complete helmet would lock his keys in the car twice in one day.
Some helmet had parked across two spaces again.
Similardickhead, knobhead, knob
Note
The insult grew out of the anatomical meaning, and that is where it gets its sting. It is a countable noun that pairs readily with scornful adjectives: a complete helmet, a stinky old helmet. Because of where it comes from, it is coarser than its playful sound suggests. It is safest among friends who share the joke and best kept out of formal speech.
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Origin
From Middle English helmet, borrowed from Old French helmet (a diminutive of helme, Modern French heaume), equivalent to helm plus -et. The Old French word was itself of Germanic origin, and helmet has been used in English since the 15th century, largely replacing helm as the general word.