shelves


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shelves

 (shĕlvz)
n.
Plural of shelf.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

shelves

(ʃɛlvz)
n
the plural of shelf
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

shelf

(ʃɛlf)

n., pl. shelves (shelvz).
1. a thin slab of wood, metal, etc., fixed horizontally to a wall or in a frame, for supporting objects.
2. the contents of this: a shelf of books.
3. a surface or projection resembling this; ledge.
4.
a. a sandbank or submerged extent of rock in the sea or river.
b. the bedrock underlying an alluvial deposit or the like.
Idioms:
1. off the shelf, readily available from merchandise in stock.
2. on the shelf,
a. put aside temporarily; postponed.
b. inactive; useless.
[1350–1400; Middle English; Old English scylfe; akin to Middle Low German schelf shelf, Old Norse -skjalf bench]
shelf′like`, adj.
Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
With this she went to another cupboard which was filled with shelves. All the shelves were lined with blue glass bottles, neatly labeled by the Magician to show what they contained.
But these, as it happened, Alice had NOT got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
I looked along the lower rows of shelves, standing just near enough to them to read the titles on the backs of the volumes.
Looking with greater attention at these contrivances (wondering to find such literary preparations in such a place), I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket; then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be arranged, edge-wise, on these shelves, till morning.
Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the inner arrangements, had been suffered to remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed.
But, the little shop is so excessively dark, is stuck so full of black shelves and brackets and nooks and corners, that he sees Mr Venus's cup and saucer only because it is close under the candle, and does not see from what mysterious recess Mr Venus produces another for himself until it is under his nose.
The high, bulging shelves of heavy tomes humbled him and at the same time stimulated him.
Still it was all held, and shut with glass doors, in a case of very few shelves. It was not considerably enlarged during my childhood, for few books came to my father as editor, and he indulged himself in buying them even more rarely.
Stores, nor public buildings, nor all the dwellings of men ever opened their doors to me and let me warm by their fires or permitted me to eat the food of the gods from narrow shelves against the wall.
Then a hall, which led to the study, where books and papers were piled on the shelves of a book-case that enclosed three quarters of the big black desk.
The rock sweeps like mason-work, in a half-round, on both sides of the fall, and shelves over the bottom for fifty feet; so that when I’ve been sitting at the foot of the first pitch, and my hounds have run into the caverns behind the sheet of water, they’ve looked no bigger than so many rabbits.
She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed; it was labelled `ORANGE MARMALADE', but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar for fear of killing somebody, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it.