shale

Definition of shale

4 senses · 2 parts of speech · etymology included

noun

(countable, uncountable)A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.

“the green shales of a bean”
“Mr. Lyell next visited the red and green shales of Cabotville, north of Springfield in Massachusetts, where some of the best Ornithichnites have been procured, chiefly in the green shale.”

See all 4 definitions

noun

(countable, uncountable)A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.

“the green shales of a bean”
“Mr. Lyell next visited the red and green shales of Cabotville, north of Springfield in Massachusetts, where some of the best Ornithichnites have been procured, chiefly in the green shale.”
(countable, uncountable)A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.

“As on all large green roofs, the soil is not dirt exactly but a gravel-like growing medium of granulated pumice, shales, clays and other minerals.”
“Five years in, ARPA–E’s priorities have shifted, too, for the same reason. The cheap natural gas freed from shale by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) has helped kill off bleeding-edge programs like Electrofuels, a bid to use microbes to turn cheap electricity into liquid fuels, […]”
(countable, metonymically, uncountable)The shale oil and shale gas segment of the oil and gas industry.

verb

To take off the shell or coat of.

Definitions from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA.

Etymology

From Middle English schale (“shell, husk; scale”), from Old English sċealu (“shell, husk, pod”), from Proto-West Germanic *skalu, from Proto-Germanic *skalō, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to split, cut”), from *(s)kel- (“to…

See full etymology

From Middle English schale (“shell, husk; scale”), from Old English sċealu (“shell, husk, pod”), from Proto-West Germanic *skalu, from Proto-Germanic *skalō, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to split, cut”), from *(s)kel- (“to split, cleave”). See also West Frisian skaal (“dish”), Dutch schaal (“shell”), schalie (“shale”), German Schale (“husk, pod”); also Lithuanian skalà (“splinter”), Old Church Slavonic скала (skala, “rock, stone”), Polish skała (“rock”), Albanian halë (“fish bone, splinter”), Sanskrit कल (kalá, “small part”); also Hittite [script needed] (iškalla, “to tear apart, slit open”), Lithuanian skélti (“to split”), Ancient Greek σκάλλω (skállō, “to hoe, harrow”). Doublet of scale. See also shell.

Anagrams of shale

10 plays · some not in Scrabble

Best play hales 8 points

Words you can make from shale

44 playable · top: HALES (8 pts)

Best play hales 8 points

5-letter words

4 words

4-letter words

11 words

3-letter words

17 words

2-letter words

11 words

Hooks

3 extensions · 3 back

A single letter you can add to shale to make another valid word.