shale
A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structureA fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
Recorded UK: Speaker: Vealhurl Recorder: Vealhurl, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
» Algeria has massive quantities of shale oil that could be extracted through fracking.
Amastan · Tatoeba · CC BY 2.0 FRTranslations
8 languagesBy meaning 1
By meaning 1
Examples
12 sentencesAlgeria has massive quantities of shale oil that could be extracted through fracking.
Fracking is a type of geo-engineering to get oil out of shale.
The geologist noted a tabular layer of anthracite running between two bands of shale.
Meaning
3 senses(countable, uncountable)A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
Tonstein, Ölschiefer, Schieferton
сла́нецslánec
(countable, uncountable)A shell, scale or husk; a cod or pod.
(countable, metonymically, uncountable)The shale oil and shale gas segment of the oil and gas industry.
- a sedimentary rock formed by the deposition of successive layers of clay
Origin
From Middle English schale (“shell, husk; scale”), from Old English sċealu (“shell, husk,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”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Forms
plural: shalesWord family
19 related wordsLessons for this word
1 lessons- A1Countable and uncountable nouns — Because it can be uncountable
See also
neighbours in the dictionaryDictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.