shell out

English[edit]

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^[1], 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^[2], →ISSN:
  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.
- 2023 June 14, Mel Holley, “Network News: One year on: rail strikes still at a stalemate”, in RAIL, number 985, pages 10–11:
  "While their rhetoric continues, this is merely a diversion to the very real financial challenge the industry is facing, with taxpayers still shelling out up to an extra £175 million a month to keep trains running by making up the 20% shortfall in revenue post-COVID.
(computing, especially Unix) To use a program's "shell escape" function to execute an unrelated command or to invoke a subsidiary, interactive shell.

pay money

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.