shell
noun · verb
Simple meaning
The material that forms the hard outer covering of many animals.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
shehlIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈʃɛl
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
The material that forms the hard outer covering of many animals
A hard external covering of an animal.
The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
Hard outer covering or case of certain organisms such as arthropods and turtles
entomology
The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.
The conjoined scutes that constitute the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.
verb
intransitive
To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).
informal
To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
Remove from its shell or outer covering
intransitive
To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A2 · Elementary (estimated)
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- General English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The material that forms the hard outer covering of many animals
Used this way, shell is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use shell
- “The satellite is covered with a smooth shell of ice.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Of animals or fruits that have a shell.
The heavy fire of artillery to saturate an area rather than hit a specific target.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A swindling sleight-of-hand game.
Cultivated for its shining oblong leaves and arching clusters of white flowers with pink shading and crinkled yellow lips with variegated magenta stripes.
Waist-length jacket tapering to a point at the back.
Of animals or fruits that have no shell.
Administer or bestow, as in small portions.
Small Australian parakeet usually light green with black and yellow markings in the wild but bred in many colors.
Related words
Connected by subject or meaning, not by word formation.
Meat of edible aquatic invertebrate with a shell (especially a mollusk or crustacean).
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.