Shellfish

How to spell shellfish

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce shellfish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does shellfish mean?

1. nounAn aquatic invertebrate that has a shell, such as a crab, prawn, oyster or mussel, especially one eaten as food.

Shellfish in a sentence

• The menu warned that the soup contained shellfish and nuts.

• A severe shellfish allergy meant she avoided the seafood platter.

Where does shellfish come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a native English compound, joining two of the oldest words in the language: shell and fish. The first element comes from the Old English sciell, meaning a hard outer covering or husk, the same root that gives us the modern 'shell' and is related to 'scale' and even 'skull' through the shared idea of a hard protective layer. The second element is the Old English fisc, the ancestor of 'fish', which once described almost any creature living in water rather than the narrower modern sense. Speakers put the two together to name aquatic creatures with shells, such as oysters, crabs and mussels, even though many of them are not true fish at all. The compound has been in steady use since the medieval period, and because both halves are spelled exactly as they sound, the only real spelling care is the doubled 'l' where 'shell' meets 'fish'.

How the word is built

• shell (hard outer covering, from Old English sciell)
• fish (aquatic animal, from Old English fisc)