Word.ws English Dictionary

shells out

shells out is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 shells out

What is shells out the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Shells out is the third-person singular simple present indicative of shell out.

Words near shells out in the dictionary

  1. shellpad
  2. shellproof
  3. SHELLQ
  4. SHELLQs
  5. shells
  6. shells out
  7. shellscript
  8. shellscripts
  9. Shellses
  10. shellsful
  11. shellshock

Source and license

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