A thin membrane that separates the outer ear from the middle ear and transmits sound from the air to the malleus.
A person's ear.
The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
A light boat whose frame is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.
The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.
A gouge bit or shell bit.
A pod containing the seeds of certain plants, such as the legume Phaseolus vulgaris.
The onset and coda of a syllable.
A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.
A psychological barrier to social interaction.
The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
An engraved copper roller used in print works.
The covering, or outside part, of a nut.
A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.
An emaciated person.
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.
The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.
The accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.
The overlapping hard plates comprising the armor covering the armadillo's body.
The conjoined scutes that constitute the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.
The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.
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.
One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.
The outward form independent of what is inside.
A legal entity that has no operations.
The empty outward form of someone or something.
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.
Husks of cacao seeds, a decoction of which is sometimes used as a substitute or adulterant for cocoa and its products such as chocolate.
The thin coating of copper on an electrotype.
The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.
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.
A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in, as the shell of a house.
The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.
Any mollusk having such a covering.
A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.
To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).
To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
To remove the outer covering or shell of something.
To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
To form a shelling.
To switch to a shell or command line.