Definition of Shell

Shell

Something similar in form or action to an ordnance shell;

A case or cartridge containing a charge of explosive material, which bursts after having been thrown high into the air. It is often elevated through the agency of a larger firework in which it is contained.

A torpedo.

A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.

A gouge bit or shell bit.

A hard outside covering, as of a fruit or an animal.

The covering, or outside part, of a nut; as, a hazelnut shell.

A pod.

The hard covering of an egg.

The hard calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates. In some mollusks, as the cuttlefishes, it is internal, or concealed by the mantle. Also, the hard covering of some vertebrates, as the armadillo, the tortoise, and the like.

Hence, by extension, any mollusks having such a covering.

A hollow projectile, of various shapes, adapted for a mortar or a cannon, and containing an explosive substance, ignited with a fuse or by percussion, by means of which the projectile is burst and its fragments scattered. See Bomb.

The case which holds the powder, or charge of powder and shot, used with breechloading small arms.

Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in; as, the shell of a house.

A coarse kind of coffin; also, a thin interior coffin inclosed in a more substantial one.

An instrument of music, as a lyre, -- the first lyre having been made, it is said, by drawing strings over a tortoise shell.

An engraved copper roller used in print works.

The husks of cacao seeds, a decoction of which is often used as a substitute for chocolate, cocoa, etc.

The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.

A light boat the frame of which is covered with thin wood or with paper; as, a racing shell.

To strip or break off the shell of; to take out of the shell, pod, etc.; as, to shell nuts or pease; to shell oysters.

To separate the kernels of (an ear of Indian corn, wheat, oats, etc.) from the cob, ear, or husk.

To throw shells or bombs upon or into; to bombard; as, to shell a town.

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

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

To be disengaged from the ear or husk; as, wheat or rye shells in reaping.

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Shell Quotations

Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
Steve Jobs

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Khalil Gibran

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.
William Tecumseh Sherman

The present was an egg laid by the past that had the future inside its shell.
Zora Neale Hurston

He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.
Herman Melville

The best artist has that thought alone Which is contained within the marble shell; The sculptor's hand can only break the spell To free the figures slumbering in the stone.
Michelangelo

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
Andrew Carnegie

The word experience is like a shrapnel shell, and bursts into a thousand meanings.
George Santayana

A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.
Harriet Beecher Stowe