Other forms: shelters, sheltered, sheltering
To shelter is to get out of the weather or out of danger under something. Shelter from the rain, shelter under a tree, they sheltered in a doorway.
It is transitive too: to shelter somebody is to protect them, and to shelter a fugitive is to hide them, which is a criminal offence. The noun covers both the act and the place — take shelter, a bus shelter, an air-raid shelter, a homeless shelter. Note sheltered, which means protected from difficulty — a sheltered childhood — and sheltered housing, which in Britain is accommodation for older people with a warden on call.
1verbshelterTo get out of bad weather or danger.
“We sheltered under the arch until it passed.”
synonyms: take cover
2nounplaceA place giving protection.
“There is a shelter at the bus stop, and it leaks.”
3verbprotectTo protect somebody from something.
“They sheltered her from the worst of it.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
The word is probably from Old English scildtruma, a shield-troop — a body of men with shields locked together. The oldest shelter English had a word for was other people standing in front of you.
Old English
sċildtruma
Middle English
sheltron
English, today
shelter
Built from
From Middle English sheltron, sheldtrume (“roof or wall formed by locked shields”), from Old English sċildtruma, sċyldtruma (“a phalanx, company (of troops), a tortoise, a covering, shed, shelter”) literally “shield-troop”, from sċyld, sċield (“shield”) + truma (“a troop of soldiers”). Cognate with Scots schilthrum, schiltrum. More at shield, and Old English trymman (“to strengthen”), from trum (“strong, firm”) at trim. Doublet of sheltron (a kind of military formation), which is the more conservative of the two.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA