shell out
English
Pronunciation
Audio (AU) (file)
Verb
shell out (third-person singular simple present shells out, present participle shelling out, simple past and past participle shelled out)
- (informal, transitive, intransitive) To pay money, to disburse; especially, to pay a great deal of money.
- Synonyms: cough up, fork out, fork over
- Do you think we should shell out for the extra options package?
- 2016 October 24, Owen Gibson, “Is the unthinkable happening – are people finally switching the football off?”, in The Guardian, London:
- BT shelled out almost £1bn for the Champions League over the same period, while the FA has just brought in around £820m over six seasons for the international rights to the FA Cup alone.
- 2022 May 27, Clifford Krauss, “Gas Prices Hit New Highs as Summer Driving Season Starts”, in The New York Times, ISSN 0362-4331:
- With the Russian invasion of Ukraine grinding on, drivers will have to shell out a lot more to fill up their cars as the summer travel season begins this Memorial Day weekend.
- (computing, especially Unix) To use a program's "shell escape" function to execute an unrelated command or to invoke a subsidiary, interactive shell.
Translations
pay money
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Noun
shell out (uncountable)
- (obsolete) A game played on a billiard table, a variation of pool.
- 1875, George Worsley, Advice to the Young! (page 32)
- I have more than once had to lend a commercial money to pay his fare home; as he had played shell-out and lost the lot.
- 1875, George Worsley, Advice to the Young! (page 32)
References
- (the game): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary
- Jonathon Green (2023), “shell out v.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang
Anagrams
- slut hole, sluthole