Shale
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A shell or husk; a cod or pod. countable, uncountable
"the green shales of a bean"
- 2 a sedimentary rock formed by the deposition of successive layers of clay wordnet
- 3 A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure. countable, uncountable
"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."
- 1 To take off the shell or coat of.
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"Shale rock is a sedimentary rock made up of clay, compacted together by pressure."
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.
Related phrases
More for "shale"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.