shell

CEFRA2

/ʃɛl/

noun · verb

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    A hard outer covering of an animal or object.

  2. 02

    verb

    To remove the outer covering from something.

Examples

  • I found a beautiful shell on the shore.

  • Steve had to shell out $50.00 for the speeding ticket he got last week.

At a glance

Sits at A2 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
2
Citations
5
Synonyms
1

Also pronounced

  • /ʃel/

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A hard external covering of an animal.

  2. The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.

  3. The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.

More examples

In context

  • Genuine mother-of-pearl buttons are made from sea shells.

  • In some mollusks, as the cuttlefish, the shell is concealed by the animal's outer mantle and is considered internal.

  • The restaurant served caramelized onion shells.

Synonyms

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The turtle pulled its head and legs into its protective blank to avoid danger.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English schelle, from Old English sċel, sċell, sċiell, sċil, sċill, sċyl, sċyll, from Proto-West Germanic *skallju, from Proto-Germanic *skaljō (“shell; husk; rind; peel”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to cut; to separate, split”). Cognates Cognate with Dutch schil (“bark, rind, skin; crust; shell; slice”), Danish skæl (“scale; dandruff”), Faroese and Icelandic skel (“shell”), Norwegian Bokmål skjell (“shell; scale”), Norwegian Nynorsk skjel (“shell; bivalve; scale; carapace”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰 (skalja, “brick, tile”), French écaille (“scale; shell”), Friulian scae (“scale”), Italian scaglia (“scale; flake, sliver; splinter”); also Breton killi (“grove”), Cornish kell...