how to pronounce shell

/ˈʃɛl/

audio example by a male speaker

audio example by a female speaker

the above transcription of shell is a detailed (narrow) transcription according to the rules of the International Phonetic Association; you can find a description of each symbol by clicking the phoneme buttons in the secction below.

shell is pronounced in one syllable

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example pitch curve for pronunciation of shell

ʃɛl

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video examples of shell pronunciation

An example use of shell in a speech by a native speaker of american english:

“… right so you shed the shell the rocket …”

meanings of shell

noun:

  1. The thin coating of copper on an electrotype.
  2. The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.
  3. A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
  4. The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.
  5. A psychological barrier to social interaction.
  6. The onset and coda of a syllable.
  7. One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.
  8. The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.
  9. Husks of cacao seeds, a decoction of which is sometimes used as a substitute or adulterant for cocoa and its products such as chocolate.
  10. A legal entity that has no operations.
  11. A hard external covering of an animal.
  12. A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.
  13. An emaciated person.
  14. A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.
  15. 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.
  16. The overlapping hard plates comprising the armor covering the armadillo's body.
  17. The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.
  18. 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.
  19. A light boat whose frame is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.
  20. An engraved copper roller used in print works.
  21. 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.
  22. 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 scatter at high velocity its contents and fragments. Formerly called a bomb.
  23. The outward form independent of what is inside.
  24. The conjoined scutes that constitute the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.
  25. The accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.
  26. A person's ear.
  27. The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
  28. Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in, as the shell of a house.
  29. The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.
  30. Any mollusk having such a covering.
  31. (botany) The hard external covering of various plant seed forms.
  32. A gouge bit or shell bit.
  33. A pod containing the seeds of certain plants, such as the legume Phaseolus vulgaris.
  34. The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
  35. The empty outward form of someone or something.
  36. A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.
  37. The covering, or outside part, of a nut.

verb:

  1. To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
  2. To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
  3. To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
  4. To form a shelling.
  5. To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
  6. To remove the outer covering or shell of something.
  7. To switch to a shell or command line.
  8. To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).

name:

  1. A surname​.
  2. A diminutive of the female given name Michelle.

shell frequency in english - B2 level of CEFR

the word shell occurs in english on average 16.8 times per one million words; this frequency warrants it to be in the study list for B2 level of language mastery according to CEFR, the Common European Framework of Reference.

topics shell can be related to

it is hard to perfectly classify words into specific topics since each word can have many context of its use, but our machine-learning models believe that shell can be often used in the following areas:

1) life, nature, and living environment;

words with pronunciation similar to shell

tellsellbellcellshallshelledshillyellshawlwell

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