shell
noun
a hard outer covering of an animal, as the hard case of a mollusk, or either half of the case of a bivalve mollusk.
shells
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pluralof shell.plural
The grammatical form denoting more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
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present tense formof shell (3rd person singular).present tense
Used to describe things happening now or regularly.
shellnouna hard outer covering of an animal, as the hard case of a mollusk, or either half of the case of a bivalve mollusk.
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The cyclical freezing and thawing of soil also brings old shells to the surface, Goldammer said, much as flower beds can seem to produce fresh stones every winter.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 20, 2026
Nineteen homes across five streets in the town were completely destroyed by the fire last week, with eight households left able to view the shells of their former homes.
From BBC ● Aug. 20, 2026
Astronomers are still working to understand why this swept-up gas forms such complicated arrangements of rings and shells, structures that are commonly seen in planetary nebulae.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 12, 2026
And who knew that 19th-century San Francisco socialites ground up iridescent abalone shells and sprinkled them on their invitations?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026
The long side has decorations: One man has shells, and the other has the whole wing of a bird dangling from his hair.
From "Blood on the River" by Elisa Carbone
