shell

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The usually hard outer covering that encases certain organisms, such as insects, turtles, and most mollusks.
• noun A similar outer covering on a nut or seed.
• noun A similar outer covering on certain eggs, such as those of birds and reptiles; an eggshell.
• noun The material that constitutes such a covering.
• noun Something resembling or having the form of a shell, especially.
• noun An external, usually hard, protective or enclosing case or cover.
• noun A framework or exterior, as of a building.
• noun A thin layer of pastry.
• noun The external part of the ear.
• noun The hull of a ship.
• noun A light, long, narrow racing boat propelled by rowers.
• noun A small glass for beer.
• noun An artillery projectile containing an explosive charge.
• noun A metal or cardboard case containing the charge and primer for a piece of firearms ammunition, especially one also containing shot and fired from a shotgun.
• noun An attitude or a manner adopted to mask one's true feelings or to protect one from perceived or real danger.
• noun A set of electron orbitals having nearly the same energy and sharing the same first quantum number.
• noun Any of the stable states of other particles or collections of particles (such as the nucleons in an atomic nucleus) at a given energy or small range of energies.
• noun A usually sleeveless and collarless, typically knit blouse, often worn under another top.
• noun A thin, usually waterproof or windproof outer garment for the upper body.
• noun Computers A program that works with the operating system as a command processor, used to enter commands and initiate their execution.
• noun A company or corporation created by a second company or corporation for the purposes of facilitating a particular transaction, especially one that is intended to be concealed.
• intransitive verb To remove the shell of; shuck.
• intransitive verb To remove from a shell.
• intransitive verb To separate the kernels of (corn) from the cob.
• intransitive verb To fire shells at; bombard.
• intransitive verb To defeat decisively.
• intransitive verb Baseball To hit the pitches of (a pitcher) hard and with regularity.
• intransitive verb To shed or become free of a shell.
• intransitive verb To look for or collect shells, as on a seashore.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A smoked or colored concavo-convex glass for shielding the eye.
• noun In sheet-metal work, any piece of sheet-metal upon which one operation has been performed and which requires one or more additional operations to complete it. It is usually of a cup or shell form.
• noun The dug-out portion of a West Indian canoe, which consists of a dugout the sides of which are built up to any required height. See buck-shell.
• noun The part of a horse-hide obtained from the rump: a comparatively small piece.
• noun The porous cover of ferric oxid which incloses the kernel of concentrated copper obtained in roasting cupriferous iron pyrites. See kernel-roasting.
• noun A special form of hollow flat-iron used in finishing felt hats.
• To strip off or remove the shell or outer covering of; take out of the shell: as, to shell nuts.
• To remove from the ear or cob: as, to shell corn.
• To cover with or as with a shell; incase in or as in a shell.
• To cover or furnish with shells, as an oysterbed; provide shells for spat to set; also, to cover (land) with oyster-shells as a fertilizer.
• To throw bombshells into, upon, or among; bombard: as, to shell a fort or a town.
• See the quotation.
• To fall off, as a shell, crust, or exterior coat.