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PlainSpell

shell

/ʃɛl/noun, verb

shell is spelled S-H-E-L-L: 5 letters and one syllable. It appears 25 times per million words in written English, the 3,683rd most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data, counting Shell, the name). As a noun, shell means “The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of shell is shells.

How many letters and syllables are in shell?

Letters5: S-H-E-L-L
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing25 times per million words; the 3,683rd most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Pairs people search
Rhymes with

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is shell?

Shell appears 25 times per million words in written English, the 3,683rd most frequent word form in the list. The list counts every capitalisation together, so this includes Shell, the name.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce shell?

  • US /ʃɛl/
  • Australia /ʃel/
  • /ʃæl/

Shell has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-shell.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

Words people confuse with shell

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

shall vs shell0 B

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

What rhymes with shell?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as shell from its last stressed vowel (/ɛl/):

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of shell

  • shells plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • shelling participle, present
  • shelled participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does shell mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

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

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

  2. 2

    Any mollusk having such a covering.

  3. 3

    The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.

  4. 4

    The conjoined scutes that constitute the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.

  5. 5

    The overlapping hard plates comprising the armor covering the armadillo's body.

  6. 6

    The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.

  7. 7

    One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.

    The restaurant served caramelized onion shells.

  8. 8

    The covering, or outside part, of a nut.

    The black walnut and the hickory nut, both of the same Genus as the pecan, have much thicker and harder shells than the pecan.

verb

  1. 1

    To remove the outer covering or shell of something.

  2. 2

    To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.

    The guns shelled the enemy trenches.

  3. 3

    informalTo disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).

  4. 4

    To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.

  5. 5

    To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.

    Nuts shell in falling.

  6. 6

    To switch to a shell or command line.

  7. 7

    To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).

  8. 8

    To form a shelling.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Shell in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchcoquille, coquillage (hard calcareous or chitinous external covering…), carapace (entomology: exoskeleton of certain insects), coque (covering of a nut), cosse (pod), décortiquer (to remove the outer covering or shell of…)
GermanSchale (hard calcareous or chitinous external covering…), Eierschale (hard covering of an egg), Hülse (casing of an artillery projectile), Granate (hollow usually spherical or cylindrical…)
Portugueseconcha (hard calcareous or chitinous external covering…), carapaça (entomology: exoskeleton of certain insects), vagem (pod), descascar (to remove the outer covering or shell of…), casca (hard covering of an egg)
Spanishconcha, caparazón, carapacho (hard calcareous or chitinous external covering…), descascarar, desvainar (pea) (to remove the outer covering or shell of…), cáscara (hard covering of an egg)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does shell come from?

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”).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after shell