The rare daily word game sweeping the globe. Find what's hidden in plain sight.
SHELL
Definition of SHELL
noun
A hard external covering of an animal. The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
Wiktionary · CC BY-SA
Where it comes from
From Middle English schelle, from Old English sċel, sċell, sċiell, sċil, sċill, sċyl, sċyll, from Proto-West Germanic *skallju, from Proto-Germanic *skaljō (“shell; husk; rind; peel”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to cut; to separate, split”). Cognate with Dutch schil (“bark, rind, skin; crust; shell; slice”), Danish skæl (“scale; dandruff”), Faroese and Icelandic skel (“shell”), Norwegian Bokmål skjell (“shell; scale”), Norwegian Nynorsk skjel (“shell; bivalve; scale; carapace”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌰𐌻𐌾𐌰 (skalja, “brick, tile”), French écaille (“scale; shell”), Friulian scae (“scale”), Italian scaglia (“scale; flake, sliver; splinter”); also Breton killi (“grove”), Cornish kelli (“grove”), Irish coill (“forest, wood”), Manx keyll (“forest, wood; grove, plantation”), Scottish Gaelic coille (“forest”), Welsh celli (“grove”), Latin scalpō (“to scratch; to carve”), Ancient Greek σκᾰ́λλω (skắllō, “to hoe, stir up”), Albanian çel (“to open up; to sprout; to hatch up; to rise”), Lithuanian skelti (“to crack, split”), Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Russian скала́ (skalá, “cliff, rock”), Czech skála (“rock”), Polish skała, skáła, szkała (“rock”), Slovak and Slovene skala (“rock”), Ukrainian скала́ (skalá), ска́ля (skálja, “cliff, rock”), Armenian քաղել (kʻaġel, “to pick; to gather; to mow”), Sanskrit कॢप् (kḷp, “to order; to manage; to perform; to create; to cut”). More at shale. Doublet of sheal.
Etymology via Wiktionary (CC BY-SA).
OUTLIER scores every word on how unusual it is, and that number is not published. Working it out at the board is the game.
SHELL in OUTLIER
Players have found it on 1 board so far.
It first turned up on Day 118, 15 September 2026. Nobody has seen it on a board for 3 days.
First ever to find it
on Day 118, 15 September 2026 - before anyone else in Outlier's history. See the Pioneers
Built from these letters
SHELL starts with S and ends with L. Sorted, its letters read EHLLS - the shape to hunt for when the grid is scrambled. L appears more than once, including a double letter.
Same letters, different word
One other word uses exactly these letters. Worth knowing at the board: an anagram fits a grid the same way.
Words that start SHELL
Its neighbours in the OUTLIER dictionary - shortest first.
Could you have found SHELL?
OUTLIER is a daily word game. One grid, the same grid for everybody, and the words nobody else spots are the ones that pay. This word was on Day 118 - and most players walked straight past it.
Play today's OUTLIER