Word.ws English Dictionary

shelling out

shelling out is the present participle and gerund 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 shelling out

What is shelling out the present participle and gerund of?
Shelling out is the present participle and gerund of shell out.

Words near shelling out in the dictionary

  1. shellika
  2. shellika pooka
  3. shellika pookas
  4. shelliness
  5. shelling
  6. shelling out
  7. shellings
  8. shellless
  9. shelllike
  10. Shellman
  11. Shellmans

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shelling 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: “shelling out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shelling_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.