shell out

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

shell out (third-person singular simple present shells out, present participle shelling out, simple past and past participle shelled out)

1. (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, 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, ISSN 0362-4331:

     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.

2. (computing, especially Unix) To use a program's "shell escape" function to execute an unrelated command or to invoke a subsidiary, interactive shell.

shell out (uncountable)

1. (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.

• (the game): 1873, John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary
• Jonathon Green (2023), “shell out v.”, in Green's Dictionary of Slang

• slut hole, sluthole