Shea

How to spell shea

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shea

What does shea mean?

1. nounA West African tree whose nuts yield a fatty oil, used especially in the form of shea butter for skin care and cooking.

Shea in a sentence

• The lotion lists shea butter as its main moisturising ingredient.

• Villages across the savanna harvest shea nuts each season for export.

Where does shea come from?

Language of origin: Other

Shea comes from West Africa, where it names a tree whose nuts yield a rich, edible fat. The word entered English in the late 1790s through the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who recorded it on his travels along the Niger; he picked it up from a Mandé language, most likely Bambara, where the tree was called something close to 'sí' or 'shìí'. English speakers reshaped that short native word into the spelling 'shea', adding a silent stretch that does not match its usual 'shay' pronunciation. The tree itself, Vitellaria paradoxa, has been valued for centuries across the African savanna for the buttery oil pressed from its seeds, which is why the modern English world knows the word chiefly through 'shea butter' in cosmetics and food. The mismatch between the simple sound and the 'ea' spelling is exactly the trap: it looks as though it should rhyme with 'sea' or 'flea', yet it is most often said 'shay'.

How the word is built

• Single unanalysable root: shea (from a West African Mandé word for the tree); no prefix or suffix.

Words that sound like shea

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• she: The subject form used to refer to a female person or animal previously mentioned or easily identified.