Other forms: shales
Shale is a soft rock that splits into thin layers. A shale bed, shale oil, crumbling shale.
It is compacted mud, and the layers are the flat particles lying down as it settled. It is the source rock for most oil and gas, and fracturing it to release what is trapped inside changed the energy politics of the world within a decade.
1nounshaleA soft rock that splits into thin layers.
“Fossils are often found in the grey shale along this stretch of coast.”
shale is a rock.
Old English scealu means a shell or husk, from a Germanic root also giving scale.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)kelH- — to split, cut
Proto-Germanic
*skalō
Proto-West Germanic
*skalu
Old English
sċealu — shell, husk, pod
Middle English
schale — shell, husk; scale
English, today
shale
Built from
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”). See also West Frisian skaal (“dish”), Dutch schaal (“shell”), schalie (“shale”), German Schale (“husk, pod”); also Lithuanian skalà (“splinter”), cu скала (“rock, stone”), Polish skała (“rock”), Albanian halë (“fish bone, splinter”), Sanskrit कल (“small part”); also hit (“to tear apart, slit open”), Lithuanian skélti (“to split”), Ancient Greek σκάλλω (“to hoe, harrow”). a doublet of scale. See also shell.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA