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Any aquatic animal whose external covering consists of a shell, either testaceous, as in oysters, clams, and other mollusks, or crustaceous, as in lobsters and crabs.

The byssus of certain shellfish, as the muscle.

n, and of related genera. The posterior teeth form a pavement of bony plates for crushing shellfish. Most of the species are extinct. The Port Jackson shark and a similar one found in California are living examples.

, or lobsters, or both, at your pleasure. Capt. John Smith (1616). Clams, or clamps, is a shellfish not much unlike a coclke; it lieth under the sand. Wood (1634).

A small shellfish; the limpet or patella.

Any shellfish which casts its shell, as a lobster. [Prov. Eng.]

Shaped like the head of an ax or hatchet, as some leaves, and also certain organs of some shellfish.

Any one of many species of marine shellfish of the order Docoglossa, mostly found adhering to rocks, between tides.

- Shell mound, a mound of refuse shells, collected by aborigines who subsisted largely on shellfish. See Midden, and Kitchen middens.

al species of wading birds of the genus Hæmatopus, which frequent seashores and feed upon shellfish. The European species (H. ostralegus), the common American species (H. palliatus), and the California, or black, oyster catcher (H. Bachmani) are the best known. -- Oyster crab (Zoöl.) a small crab (Pinnotheres ostreum)…

A bed or stratum of shellfish; scalp. [Scot.]

ll jacket, an undress military jacket. -- Shell lime, lime made by burning the shells of shellfish. -- Shell marl (Min.), a kind of marl characterized by an abundance of shells, or fragments of shells. -- Shell meat, food consisting of shellfish, or testaceous mollusks. Fuller. -- Shell mound. See under Mound. --…

To conjoin; to put together in distribution; to class. Shellfish have been, by some of the ancients, compared and sorted with insects. Bacon. She sorts things present with things past. Sir J. Davies.

Invertebrate animals covered with shells, especially mollusks; shellfish.

The science which treats of testaceans, or shellfish; the description of shellfish. [R.]