Shea
//ʃeɪ// name, noun
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A tree (Vitellaria paradoxa) indigenous to Africa, occurring in Mali, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Uganda.
"The people were every where employed in collecting the fruit of the Shea trees, from which they prepare the vegetable butter mentioned in former parts of this work. […] They are not planted by the natives, but are found growing naturally in the woods; and, in clearing wood land for cultivation, every tree is cut down but the Shea."
- 2 The fruit of this tree, having a thin, tart, nutritious pulp that surrounds a relatively large, oil-rich seed.
Proper Noun
- 1 A surname from Irish.
- 2 A unisex given name transferred from the surname.
Example
More examples""Bigger lakes may increase the risk of catastrophic dam failure," Joseph Shea, a glacier hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, told the magazine Science."
Etymology
Etymology 1
Anglicised from Irish Ó Séaghdha.
Etymology 2
From Bambara si.
Related phrases
More for "shea"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.