Word.ws English Dictionary

shelled out

shelled out is the simple past and past participle of shell out.

Meaning of shell out

Verb

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

  1. (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?
  2. (Unix, especially) To use a program's "shell escape" function to execute an unrelated command or to invoke a subsidiary, interactive shell.

See all 3 meanings of shell out

Questions about shelled out

What is shelled out the simple past and past participle of?
Shelled out is the simple past and past participle of shell out.

Words near shelled out in the dictionary

  1. shelldrake
  2. shelldrakes
  3. shellduck
  4. shellducks
  5. shelled
  6. shelled out
  7. Shelleian
  8. Shellenbarger
  9. Shellenbargers
  10. Shellenberger
  11. Shellenbergers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shelled out (page history and authors); 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.

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