Shale

Quick meaning: Shale is a noun meaning A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.

Meaning

A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.

More Meanings

1. (geology) A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
2. (metonymic) The shale oil and shale gas segment of the oil and gas industry.
3. To take off the shell or coat of.

Example Sentences

the green shales of a bean

As on all large green roofs, the soil is not dirt exactly but a gravel-like growing medium of granulated pumice, shales, clays and other minerals.

Mr. Lyell next visited the red and green shales of Cabotville, north of Springfield in Massachusetts, where some of the best Ornithichnites have been procured, chiefly in the green shale.

Five years in, ARPA–E’s priorities have shifted, too, for the same reason. The cheap natural gas freed from shale by horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) has helped kill off bleeding-edge programs like Electrofuels, a bid to use microbes to turn cheap electricity into liquid fuels, […]

Word Forms

• shales
• shaling
• shaled

Synonyms for shale

Depending on context, synonyms include shell.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include tar, bituminous, slate, schist, blackboard, shell.

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