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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

sheath.

A holster for a sword; a scabbard.

6 characters1 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ʃiːθ/Received-Pronunciation/ʃiθ/General-American
  1. A holster for a sword; a scabbard.

  2. Anything that has a similar shape to a scabbard that is used to hold an object that is longer than it is wide.

    broadly
  3. The base of a leaf when sheathing or investing a branch or stem, as in grasses.

  4. The insulating outer cover of an electrical cable.

  5. One of the elytra of an insect.

  6. A tight-fitting dress.

  7. The foreskin of certain animals (for example, dogs and horses).

  8. A condom.

    UK · informal
Where this word comes from

From Middle English sheth, shethe (“holder for a sword, knife, etc., scabbard, sheath”) [and other forms], from Old English sċēaþ (“sheath”), from Proto-West Germanic *skaiþiju, from Proto-Germanic *skaiþiz (“sheath; covering”), from Proto-Indo-European *skey- (“to dissect, split”) (possibly from the notion of a split stick with a sword inserted). The English word is cognate with Danish skede, Dutch schede, Icelandic skeið, German Scheide, Low German scheed, Norwegian skjede.

verb/ʃiːð/Received-Pronunciation/ʃið/General-American
  1. Obsolete spelling of sheathe.

    alt-of · obsolete
Where this word comes from

A variant of sheathe.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.