Other forms: helmets
A helmet is a hard hat that protects your head. A cycle helmet, a motorbike helmet, a hard hat on a building site.
The word covers everything from a bicycle helmet to a medieval knight's, and the context always says which. In Britain a cycle helmet is not compulsory for adults and a motorcycle helmet is, which is a distinction worth knowing before riding anything. Note that hard hat is the usual term on a construction site, and that helm is a different word meaning a ship's wheel — at the helm means in charge.
1nounhelmetA hard hat worn to protect the head.
“He never rides without a helmet.”
helmet is protective headwear.
Old French helmet is a small helm, from a Germanic word for a covering — the same root as the English verb to helm in the old sense of covering, and as hull. English borrowed back a French diminutive of its own cousin word.
Proto-Indo-European
*ḱel- (cover)
Old French
helmet
Middle English
helmet
English, today
helmet
From Middle English helmet, helmett, a borrowing from Old French helmet, heaumet, a diminutive of helme (Modern French heaume), equivalent to helm + et. The Old French is itself of gem - origin (whence Old English helm). Used in English since the 15th century, it has largely displaced helm as the general word.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA