The U.S. seal is used to verify certain documents issued by the U.S. federal government. The term is used for both the physical seal itself, which is kept by the Secretary of state of the United States, and the design on it. The seal was first used in public in 1782.

The obverse of the seal is used as the national emblem of the United States. It's officially used on U.S. passports, military insignia, Embassy slogans, and various flags. As a badge, the design has a formal color; the physical seal affixed to the paper itself is monochromatic.

Since 1935, both sides of the big seal have appeared on the opposite side of a dollar bill. The U.S. presidential seal is directly based on the large seal, and its elements are used by many government agencies and state seals.

The design of the front (or front) of the seal is the emblem of the United States. Although the shield is sometimes painted incorrectly, it differs from the American flag in two main ways. First, there are no stars on the blue chief (although other weapons based on it also have stars: the head of arms in the U.S. Senate may display 13 or 50, while the shield of the 9 / 11 Committee sometimes has 50 squid on its head). Second, unlike the American flag, the outermost stripe is white, not red, so as not to violate the rules of the stripe.

The shield's supporter is a vulture with wings outstretched (or "shown" in heraldry). From the eagle's point of view, its left paw (referring to 13 primitive States) is equipped with a bundle of 13 arrows, and its right paw is equipped with a bunch of olive branches, which symbolizes the United States "strong desire for peace and hope to be ready for war forever." (see olive branch petition). Although the law does not clearly stipulate, the olive branch is usually depicted with 13 leaves and 13 olives, representing 13 original states again. The eagle's head turns to the olive branch on the right, which is said to symbolize a preference for peace. On his beak, the eagle holds the scroll with the motto e pluribus unum ("everyone has it"). There is a "glory" on its head. There are 13 fish (stars) in the blue field.

In 1782, Congress passed an effective weapons resolution, legally marking the shield as "13 columns, silver and red, mainly sky blue". As the designer realized, under the traditional rules of English heraldry, this is technically incorrect, because in English practice, the shield with vertical stripes will be described as "pally", not "paleways", and there will be no odd number of stripes. The more technically appropriate black should be silver, six trays red (there are six red stripes on the white field), but the phrase was chosen to retain references to the 13 original states.