shell out

shell out verb: to pay money, to disburse; especially, to pay a great deal of money.

Verb

shell out (third-person singular simple present shells out, present participle shelling out, simple past and past participle shelled out)

(ambitransitive, informal) To pay money, to disburse; especially, to pay a great deal of money.
- Do you think we should shell out for the extra options package?
- TAXPAYERS are shelling out more than €2m annually to pay for the salaries of 10 high-profile CEOs employed in commercial semi-state bodies.2007 October 29, Patricia McDonagh, “Top 10 bosses in semi-state firms cost total of €2m a year”, in Irish Independent
Synonyms:

cough up, fork out, fork over
(Unix, especially) To use a program's "shell escape" function to execute an unrelated command or to invoke a subsidiary, interactive shell.

shell out (uncountable)

(obsolete) A game played on a billiard table, a variation of pool.
- I have more than once had to lend a commercial money to pay his fare home; as he had played shell-out and lost the lot.1875, George Worsley, Advice to the Young!, page 32

third-person singular present	shells out
present participle	shelling out
past participle	shelled out
past	shelled out

What does shell out mean?: Shell out means to pay money, to disburse; especially, to pay a great deal of money.
What part of speech is shell out?: Shell out can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of shell out?: The past tense of shell out is shelled out.

Adapted from Wiktionary: shell out (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “shell out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shell_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.