Word.ws English Dictionary

star shell

star shell noun: a type of ammunition shell which bursts to release a shower of stars for illuminating enemy positions etc.

Noun

star shell (plural star shells)

  1. A type of ammunition shell which bursts to release a shower of stars for illuminating enemy positions etc.
    • Twilight deepened, and a flicker of star-shells wavered in the sky beyond Béthune.1928, Siegfried Sassoon, Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, Penguin, published 2013, page 260
    • The sky flickered with the flash of guns, and an occasional star-shell flooded their path with light.1929, Frederic Manning, The Middle Parts of Fortune, Vintage, published 2014, page 5

Forms of star shell

pluralstar shells
alternative formstar-shell
alternative formstarshell

Questions about star shell

What does star shell mean?
Star shell means a type of ammunition shell which bursts to release a shower of stars for illuminating enemy positions etc.
What part of speech is star shell?
Star shell is a noun.
What is the plural of star shell?
The plural of star shell is star shells.

Words near star shell in the dictionary

  1. star section
  2. star sedge
  3. star sedges
  4. star seed
  5. star seeds
  6. star shell
  7. star shells
  8. star shot
  9. star shower
  10. star showers
  11. star sign

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: star shell (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: “star shell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/star_shell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.