Shell

How to spell shell

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce shell

What does shell mean?

1. nounThe hard protective outer case of an egg, nut, seed, or shellfish.
2. nounA hollow metal projectile filled with explosive, fired from a large gun.
3. verbTo remove something from its hard outer case, such as peas or nuts.

Shell in a sentence

• noun

  The bird tapped the egg until the shell cracked open.

• noun

  The artillery shell exploded in the empty field.

• verb

  She sat at the table to shell the fresh peas for dinner.

• noun

  A walnut has a tough shell that is hard to break by hand.

• noun

  Soldiers took cover as another shell landed nearby.

• verb

  It takes patience to shell a large bowl of pistachios.

Where does shell come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Shell comes from the Old English word sciell, which described a hard outer covering such as a seashell, an eggshell, or a nutshell. It belongs to a wider Germanic family that includes the Old Norse skel and the Dutch schel, all tracing back to a root meaning 'to split or scale off', the same idea that gives us 'scale' and 'skill' through related branches. The literal sense was always something that flakes away or splits open to reveal what is inside, which is why it suited the brittle casing of a nut or an egg. From the late medieval period the meaning broadened to any hollow protective frame, and by the seventeenth century it named the metal casing of an explosive projectile. The double 'l' simply preserves the old spelling pattern, and because the word is short and phonetic it rarely causes spelling trouble.

How the word is built

• shell (from Old English sciell: a hard outer case or husk)