Noun

• A type of pasta, made with the thumb from a small disk, typically from Puglia.

Noun

• A hard external covering of an animal.
• The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.
• One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.
• (botany) The hard external covering of various plant seed forms.
• (geology) The accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.
• (weaponry) The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.
• (weaponry) A hollow, usually spherical or cylindrical projectile fired from a siege mortar or a smoothbore cannon. It contains an explosive substance designed to be ignited by a fuse or by percussion at the target site so that it will burst and scattered at high velocity its contents and fragments. Formerly called a bomb.
• (weaponry) The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.
• (architecture) Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in, as the shell of a house.
• A garment, usually worn by women, such as a shirt, blouse, or top, with short sleeves or no sleeves, that often fastens in the rear.
• A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.
• (music) A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.
• (music) The body of a drum; the often wooden, often cylindrical acoustic chamber, with or without rims added for tuning and for attaching the drum head.
• An engraved copper roller used in print works.
• The thin coating of copper on an electrotype.
• (nautical) The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.
• (nautical, rigging) The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
• (nautical) A light boat whose frame is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.
• (chemistry) A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.
• (figurative) The outward form independent of what is inside.
• (figurative) The empty outward form of someone or something.
• An emaciated person.
• A psychological barrier to social interaction.
• (computing) An operating system software user interface, whose primary purpose is to launch other programs and control their interactions; the user’s command interpreter. Shell is a way to separate the internal complexity of the implementation of the command from the user. The internals can change while the user experience/interface remains the same.
• (business) A legal entity that has no operations.
• A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
• (engineering) A gouge bit or shell bit.
• (phonology) The onset and coda of a syllable.

Examples

• In some mollusks, as the cuttlefish, the shell is concealed by the animal’s outer mantle and is considered internal.
• Genuine mother-of-pearl buttons are made from sea shells.
• The restaurant served caramelized onion shells.
• The black walnut and the hickory nut, both of the same Genus as the pecan, have much thicker and harder shells than the pecan.
• The first lyre may have been made by drawing strings over the underside of a tortoise shell.
• when Jubal struck the chorded shell
• The setback left him a mere shell; he was never the same again.
• He’s lost so much weight from illness; he’s a shell of his former self.
• Even after months of therapy he’s still in his shell.
• The name “Bash” is an acronym which stands for “Bourne-again shell”, itself a pun on the name of the “Bourne shell”, an earlier Unix shell designed by Stephen Bourne, and the Christian concept of being “born again”.
• A shell corporation was formed to acquire the old factory.
• Synonym: shell-like
• Can I have a quick word in your shell?

Verb

• To remove the outer covering or shell of something.
• To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
• (informal) To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
• (intransitive) To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
• (intransitive) To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
• (computing, intransitive) To switch to a shell or command line.
• To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).
• (topology) To form a shelling.

Examples

• Nuts shell in falling.
• Wheat or rye shells in reaping.
• Automenu is a good program to try, and offers a fair amount of protection – but, unfortunately, it’s one of those systems that allow users to shell to DOS.