Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A fissile rock composed of layers of claylike, fine-grained sediments.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A shell or husk.
- To take off the shell or coat of.
- n. Clay, or argillaceous material, which has a fissile structure, or which splits readily into thin leaves. Shale differs from slate in being decidedly less firmly consolidated; but there is often a gradual passage of one into the other.
Wiktionary
- n. A shell or husk; a cod or pod.
- n. geology A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
- v. To take off the shell or coat of.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A shell or husk; a cod or pod.
- n. (Geol.) A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
- v. To take off the shell or coat of; to shell.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a sedimentary rock formed by the deposition of successive layers of clay
Etymologies
- Middle English schale 'shell, husk; scale', from Old English scealu 'shell, husk, pod', from Proto-Germanic *skalō (compare West Frisian skaal 'dish', Dutch schaal 'shell', German Schale 'husk, pod'), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelo- 'split, cleaved' (compare Lithuanian skalà 'splinter', Old Church Slavonic skala 'rock, stone', Albanian halë 'fish bone, splinter', Sanskrit kalá 'small part'), from *(s)kel- 'to split, cleave' (compare Hittite iškalla 'to tear apart, slit open', Lithuanian skélti 'to split', Ancient Greek skállein 'to hoe, harrow'). (Wiktionary)
- Probably from Middle English, shell, from Old English scealu; see skel-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Heating oil shale to a sufficiently high temperature will drive off a vapor which processing can distill (retort) to yield a petroleum-like shale oil-a form of non-conventional oil-and combustible shale gas (the term shale gas can also refer to gas occurring naturally in shales).”
WN.com - Articles related to Using solar energy to power the hydrogen economy of the future
“The amount of water it takes to get that oil shale is pretty much all the water we have.”
“Bloomberg News Drilling in shale-gas formations, as here near Montrose, Pa., has contributed to a near-record U.S. supplies of natural gas.”
“India plans to sign an initial agreement with the U.S. in shale gas exploration, as it prepares to auction blocks by the end of next year to tap the fuel source, top oil ministry officials said.”
“MUMBAI -- India plans to sign an initial agreement with the U.S. in shale gas exploration, as it prepares to auction blocks by the end of next year to tap the fuel source, top oil ministry officials said Monday.”
The Wall Street Journal: India Plans to Sign Shale Gas Pact With U.S.
“The South Asian nation's interest in shale gas stems from the fact that the U.S. has attracted heavy investments in the sector from global energy giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil as well as Reliance Industries, India's largest company by market value.”
“The South Asian nation 's interest in shale gas stems from the fact that the U.S. has attracted heavy investments in the sector from global energy giants such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Exxon Mobil Corp. as well as Reliance Industries Ltd.,”
The Wall Street Journal: India Plans to Sign Shale Gas Pact With U.S.
“CNOOC Ltd. CEO Yang Hua said that The cooperation with Chesapeake in shale oil and natural gas is consistent with our value-driven overseas development strategy.”
Forbes: Chesapeake Carves Off A Chunk In Shale Sale To CNOOC
“The shale is part of a 600-mile-long geological formation containing a huge reservoir of natural gas.”
The Huffington Post: Stephan Salisbury: Surveillance, America's Pastime
“I agree that getting oil from shale is not the answer.”
Coyote Blog » Blog Archive » Hard To Believe For Anyone Who Trusted The Media in the 1970s
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘shale’.
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Coal Mining Terms
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firedamp, scrip, bituminous, anthracite, company store, blackdamp, brattice, bug dust, tipple, whitedamp, float dust, fly ash and 136 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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TECH - web application frameworks
limit, pack, automatic, HTTP, database, poi, event, coverage, core, hibernate, function, product and 310 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Hydrocarbon Energy Exploration/Extrac...
A list of terms encountered in the jargon of hydrocarbon exploration, mapping, and extraction.
hydrofracking, hydraulic fracturing, drilling, borehole, rig, formation, shale, coal, marl, seismic, horizontal drilling, unconventional ga... and 77 more...
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thing
apron, lard, clove, camphor, alfalfa, amber, caraway, juniper, kohl, lute, shale, glyph and 142 more...
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Color Words for Shoes
Vendors can get oddly creative.
amaranth, brindle, iguana, slate black, madder brown, bison, pinecone, seal brown, forest night, burnt orange, monument, beet red and 399 more...
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erinnbatykefer's Words
ewer, lace, grenadine, wick, haruspex, augur, distal, proximal, supine, labyrinthine, rivers, monongahela and 176 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, S
scrunch, solace, sabotage, saccade, sacerdotal, sacrilegious, sacristy, snappy, skew, steadfast, scowl, scorch and 781 more...
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Words Covered in Faery Dust (S)
words that evoke magic, mystery, mayhem, magnificence or anything else that glimmers in the grass
sabian symbols, saffron, sagacious, sage, salamander, sally lunn, salmon, salsify, salt water taffy, samhain, sand dollar, sandalwood and 270 more...
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jagosaurus's favorites
Words I like mostly because of the way they sound and feel.
ticonderoga, petulance, snark, estimable, chickahominy, feline, gezellig, gneiss, shit, willy-nilly, shelter, coda and 366 more...
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theastic's Words
cellar, stalemate, wrought, opal, tyrant, squelch, squab, linen, tartan, paisley, scope, siren and 395 more...
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cutting words
sarcasm, sarx, sarcoptic, syssarcosis, shrew, shrewd, screed, scred, shroud, scroll, scrod, scrutiny and 326 more...
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miscellanea
antimacassar, snootful, sessile, glagolitic, marrowsky, farrago, keel, calumny, rheum, talisman, tally, awry and 508 more...
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wordrainbow
A big list of color names for use on wordrainbow.com
emerald, cherry, coffee, cream, almond, gold, kiwi, green, grass green, aquamarine, beet red, sepia and 714 more...
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the earth beneath our feet
Words that have to do with the earth: dirt, bedrock, grass, flowers, trees, etc.
alluvium, deposit, bedrock, clod, subsoil, undersoil, shale, sedge, hillock, macadam, bracken, chert and 1 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for shale.
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