Noun

(en noun)

A hard external covering of an animal.

# The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.

In some mollusks, as the cuttlefish, the shell is concealed by the animal's outer mantle and is considered internal.

Genuine mother of pearl buttons are made from sea shells .

# (by extension) Any mollusk having such a covering.

# (entomology) The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.

# The conjoined scutes that comprise the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.

# The overlapping hard plates comprising the armor covering the armadillo's body.

The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.

The hard external covering of various plant seed forms.

# The covering, or outside part, of a nut.

The black walnut and the hickory nut, both of the same ''Genus as the pecan, have much thicker and harder shells than the pecan.

# A pod containing the seeds of certain plants, such as the legume Phaseolus vulgaris .

# (in the plural) 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 accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.

The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.

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 scattered at high velocity its contents and fragments. Formerly called a bomb.

The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.

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

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.

A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.

(Knight)

(music) A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.

The first lyre may have been made by drawing strings over the underside of a tortoise shell.

* Dryden

when Jubal struck the chorded shell

(music) 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.

An engraved copper roller used in print works.

(nautical) The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.

(nautical, rigging) The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.

(nautical) A light boat the frame of which is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.

(computing) An operating system software user interface, whose primary purpose is to launch other programs and control their interactions; the user's command interpreter.

The name shell originates from it being viewed as an outer layer of interface between the user and the internals of the operating system.

The name "Bash" is an acronym which stands for "Bourne-again shell", itself a pun on the name of the "Bourne shell", an earlier Unix shell designed by Stephen Bourne, and the Christian concept of being "born again".

(chemistry) A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.

An emaciated person.

He's lost so much weight from illness; he's a shell of his former self.

A psychological barrier to social interaction.

Even after months of therapy he's still in his shell .

(business) A legal entity that has no operations.

A shell corporation was formed to acquire the old factory.

Noun

(en noun)

A tool for finding whether a surface is , or for creating a horizontal or vertical line of reference.

A distance relative to a given reference elevation.

Degree or amount.

* , chapter=17

, title= The Mirror and the Lamp , passage=This time was most dreadful for Lilian. Thrown on her own resources and almost penniless, she maintained herself and paid the rent of a wretched room near the hospital by working as a charwoman, sempstress, anything. In a moment she had dropped to the level of a casual labourer.}}

* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-05-17, author=George Monbiot, authorlink=George Monbiot

, title=Money just makes the rich suffer, volume=188, issue=23, page=19, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) citation , passage=In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]  The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra–wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.}}

(computer science) Distance from the root node of a tree structure.

(gaming) One of several discrete segments of a game generally increasing in difficulty. Often numbered. Often, each level occupies different physical space (levels don't require any direct physical relationship to each other, e.g. vertically stacked, horizontally chained, etc).

(gaming) A numeric value that quantifies a character's experience and power.

A floor of a multi-storey building.

(British) an area of almost perfectly flat land.