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shuck

Pronunciation: /ʃʌk/

The English word “shuck” has 13 meanings listed here.

noun

  1. The shell or husk, especially of grains (e.g. corn/maize) or nuts (e.g. walnuts).
  2. A fraud; a scam.
  3. A phony.
  4. A supernatural and generally malevolent black dog in English folklore.

verb

  1. To remove the shuck from (walnuts, oysters, etc.).
  2. To remove (any outer covering).
  3. To remove (an external hard drive or solid-state drive) from its casing so that it can be used inside another device.
  4. To fool; to hoax.
  5. To shake; shiver.
  6. To slither or slip, move about, wriggle.
  7. To do hurriedly or in a restless way.
  8. To avoid; baffle, outwit, shirk.
  9. To walk at a slow trot.

Etymology

Origin unknown. Possibly a dialectal survival of unrecorded Middle English *schulk(e), *schullok (“small shell”); either from Old English *sċylluc, *sċylloc, diminutive of Old English sċyll (“shell”), or alternatively created in Middle English from Middle English schulle, schelle (“shell, husk, pod”) + -ok, making it equivalent to shell + -ock (diminutive suffix) or shell + -k (diminutive suffix).

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.