Word.ws English Dictionary

shelliest

shelliest is the superlative form of shelly.

Meaning of shelly

Adjective

shelly (comparative shellier, superlative shelliest)

  1. Composed of the shells of dead marine creatures
    • After all, we live today in an unusual world: sea level is low, the continents are dispersed, ice occupies the poles, and the shelly fauna of the oceans is composed largely of aragonite rather than calcite.2000 June 16, Karl W. Flessa, “Learning from the Dead”, in Science, volume 288, number 5473, →DOI, pages 1971–1972
  2. Resembling, or comprising, the shell of a mollusc
    • Shrined are your offspring in a chrystal cradle, / Brighter than Helen's ere she yet had burst / Her shelly prison.1818, Charles Lamb, “On the Sight of Swans in Kensington Garden”, in The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb
  3. Abounding with shells.
    • a shelly beach

See all 6 meanings of shelly

Questions about shelliest

What is shelliest the superlative form of?
Shelliest is the superlative form of shelly.

Words near shelliest in the dictionary

  1. shellheap
  2. shellheaps
  3. shellie
  4. shellier
  5. shellies
  6. shelliest
  7. shellika
  8. shellika pooka
  9. shellika pookas
  10. shelliness
  11. shelling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shelliest (page history and authors); shelly (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: “shelliest.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shelliest. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.