Word.ws English Dictionary

shuck

/ʃʌk/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/ʃʊk/

shuck noun: the shell or husk, especially of grains (e.g. corn/maize) or nuts (e.g. walnuts).

Noun (1)

shuck (plural shucks)

  1. The shell or husk, especially of grains (e.g. corn/maize) or nuts (e.g. walnuts).
    • There was no linen, no pillow, and when she touched the mattress it gave forth the faint dry whisper of shucks.1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Library of America, published 1985, page 46
  2. (slang, African-American Vernacular) A fraud; a scam.
  3. (slang) A phony.

Verb (1)

shuck (third-person singular simple present shucks, present participle shucking, simple past and past participle shucked)

  1. (transitive) To remove the shuck from (walnuts, oysters, etc.).
    • Shall we shuck walnuts?
  2. (transitive) To remove (any outer covering).
    • I will shuck my clothes and dive naked into the pool.
    • [...] but what had actually happened was that the wheel of one of the coaches became detached from its axle, or, in the more expressive American argot, the train "shucked off a wheel near Everett."1941 April, “Notes and News: The Reason Why”, in Railway Magazine, page 182
  3. (slang, transitive) To remove (an external hard drive or solid-state drive) from its casing so that it can be used inside another device.
  4. (intransitive, slang, transitive) To fool; to hoax.

Verb (2)

shuck (third-person singular simple present shucks, present participle shucking, simple past and past participle shucked)

  1. (dialectal) To shake; shiver.
  2. (dialectal) To slither or slip, move about, wriggle.
  3. (dialectal) To do hurriedly or in a restless way.
  4. (dialectal) To avoid; baffle, outwit, shirk.
  5. (dialectal) To walk at a slow trot.

Noun (2)

shuck (plural shucks)

  1. (European) A supernatural and generally malevolent black dog in English folklore.
    Synonyms:
    padfoot, shriker

Proper noun capitalized: Shuck

Shuck (plural Shucks)

  1. A surname.

shuck meaning in Tamil and Urdu

shuck in Tamil

உமி, புறத்தோல்

shuck in Urdu

shuck
اخروٹ کا چھلکا axroṭ kā chalkā

Examples of shuck in a sentence

  • We attended a corn shucking and two oyster shuckings.
  • Meanwhile, I shucked my chefwear long enough to do two things.
  • Douglas got up from the couch, shucked down his pants, and then knelt down beside my mother.

All 11 example sentences with shuck

Synonyms of shuck

Forms of shuck

Noun
pluralshucks
alternative form (dialectal)shock
Verb
third-person singular presentshucks
present participleshucking
past participleshucked
pastshucked
Proper noun
pluralShucks

Origin of shuck

Origin unknown. Possibly a dialectal survival of unrecorded Middle English *schulk(e), *schullok (“small shell”); either from Old English *sċylluc, *sċylloc, diminutive of Old English sċyll (“shell”), or alternatively created in Middle English from Middle English schulle, schelle (“shell, husk, pod”) + -ok, making it equivalent to shell + -ock (diminutive suffix) or shell + -k (diminutive suffix).

From a dialectal variant of shock.

Possibly from Middle English shucke, schucke (“demon, monster”), from Old English sċucca (“an evil spirit”).

Words formed from shuck

Phrases with shuck

Words that rhyme with shuck

39 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about shuck

What does shuck mean?
Shuck means the shell or husk, especially of grains (e.g. corn/maize) or nuts (e.g. walnuts).
What is shuck in Tamil?
Shuck in Tamil is உமி, புறத்தோல். See Shuck meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is shuck?
Shuck can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce shuck?
Shuck is pronounced /ʃʌk/.
What is the plural of shuck?
The plural of shuck is shucks.

Words near shuck in the dictionary

  1. Shubs
  2. shubunkin
  3. shubunkins
  4. Shucheng
  5. Shuchita
  6. shuck
  7. shuck and jive
  8. shuck and jives
  9. shuck beans
  10. shuck down
  11. shuck off

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shuck (page history and authors); Shuck (page history and authors); shuck (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); اخروٹ کا چھلکا (Urdu) (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-shuck.ogg.

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