shale
/ʃeɪl/
shale noun: a shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.
Noun
shale (countable and uncountable, plural shales)
- A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.
- the green shales of a beanc. 1610s, Homer (attributed), translated by George Chapman, The Crowne of all Homers Workes: Batrachomyomachia, or the Battaile of Frogs and Mise […], published 1624
- 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.1834 October, Charles Lyell, “On the fossil foot-prints of birds”, in The American Journal of Science, volume 45, page 395
- 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.2007 March 23, Patricia Leigh Brown, “The Window Box Gets Some Tough Competition”, in The New York Times
- 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...2014 March 20, David Biello, “Fracking Hammers Clean Energy Research”, in Scientific American
- The shale oil and shale gas segment of the oil and gas industry.
- American shale’s placid responses to energy whirlwinds are becoming an enduring feature of the U.S. oil industry. In recent years, public drillers under investor pressure to be profitable have treated spiking oil prices as an opportunity to return more cash to shareholders—and lock in prices for...2026 March 4, Benoît Morenne, “Why American Frackers Aren’t Rushing to Pump More Oil: U.S. shale giants won’t budge from their plans, despite the market chaos”, in The Wall Street Journal
Verb
shale (third-person singular simple present shales, present participle shaling, simple past and past participle shaled)
- To take off the shell or coat of.
- Synonyms:
- shell
shale meaning in Tamil, Kannada, Tagalog and Persian
shale in Tamil
- படைக்களிப்பாறை, களிப்பாறை, மென் களிமண் கல், மாக்கற்பாறை
shale in Kannada
- ಹಾಳೆಕಲ್ಲು
shale in Tagalog
- sedimentary rock
- eskuwisto
shale in Persian
- sedimentary rock
- شیست šist
Examples of shale in a sentence
- The formation consists of cyclothemic sequences of coal, shale, limestone, sandstone, and clay.
- The shale bed is uphole from the limestone reservoir.
- Oil shale is different from the shale gas that is extracted through fracking.
Synonyms of shale
Forms of shale
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | shales |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | shales |
| present participle | shaling |
| past participle | shaled |
| past | shaled |
Origin of shale
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.
Words formed from shale
Phrases with shale
Words that rhyme with shale
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- veil
- pale
- avail
- wale
- whale
- bail
- hail
- yale
- bale
- snail
- travail
- brail
- exhale
- frail
- jail
- prevail
- swale
- vail
- wail
- derail
- dwale
- entail
- flail
- Gail
- gayle
- impale
- kale
- quail
- regale
- spale
- thumbnail
- white whale
- ale
- curtail
- drail
- gale
- inhale
- retail
- tael
- unveil
- ail
- all hail
- assail
- ayel
- beyond the pale
- braille
- cakes and ale
- camail
Questions about shale
- What does shale mean?
- Shale means a shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.
- What is shale in Tamil?
- Shale in Tamil is படைக்களிப்பாறை, களிப்பாறை, மென் களிமண் கல். See Shale meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is shale?
- Shale can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce shale?
- Shale is pronounced /ʃeɪl/.
- What is the plural of shale?
- The plural of shale is shales.
Words near shale in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shale (page history and authors); shale (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); shale (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-shale.wav.
Cite this entry: “shale.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shale. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.