Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

shale

/ʃeɪl/ noun, verb, proper noun

Forms shales shaling shaled

  1. noun A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.
  2. noun (geology) A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
  3. noun (metonymic) The shale oil and shale gas segment of the oil and gas industry.
  4. verb To take off the shell or coat of.
  5. proper noun A former municipality and now subdivision of the municipality of Shkodër, Albania
  6. proper noun A river flowing from its source in the Albanian Alps, near the village of Theth
  7. proper noun A historical tribe and region of northern Albania

Synonyms

shell

Etymology

From Middle English schale (“shell, husk; scale”), from Old English sċealu (“shell, husk, pod”), from Proto-West Germanic *skalu, from Proto-Germanic *skalō, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to split, cut”), from *(s)kel- (“to split, cleave”).
See also West Frisian skaal (“dish”), Dutch schaal (“shell”), schalie (“shale”), German Schale (“husk, pod”); also Lithuanian skalà (“splinter”), Old Church Slavonic скала (skala, “rock, stone”), Polish skała (“rock”), Albanian halë (“fish bone, splinter”), Sanskrit कल (kalá, “small part”); also Hittite [script needed] (iškalla, “to tear apart, slit open”), Lithuanian skélti (“to split”), Ancient Greek σκάλλω (skállō, “to hoe, harrow”). Doublet of scale. See also shell.

Borrowed from Albanian Shalë, itself from shalë (“arid, infertile land”).

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun A shell or husk; a cod or pod. "The green shales of a bean." Chapman.
  2. noun A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure. Bituminous shale. See under Bituminous.
  3. verb To take off the shell or coat of; to shell.

Etymology [AS. scealy, scalu. See Scalme, and cf. Shell.]

Sources: Wiktionary · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “shale”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details