MEANING
1. The main body of a ship or boat, excluding structures such as the mast and rigging.
2. The outer covering of a seed, grain, or nut, or the leafy cap of certain fruits.
3. To remove the outer covering or leafy cap from a seed, grain, nut, or fruit.
Use it for
describing a boat’s outer body; locating damage below a vessel’s deck; distinguishing the hull from sails and equipmentSeparates a vessel’s watertight body from a seed covering and from the action of removing that covering. Writing functions: Vessel body / Outer covering.
Words that belong together
- a steel hull
- a damaged hull
- below the hull
On the page
The hull struck a submerged rock before the crew could turn.
Barnacles covered the part of the hull below the waterline.
Rice hulls drifted across the floor beside the sacks.
She discarded the strawberry hulls into the compost bowl.
He hulled the strawberries while the kettle boiled.
Word forms
- Base
- hull
- Past tense
- hulled
- Past participle
- hulled
- Present participle
- hulling
Usage notes
Countable noun: hull, hulls. Verb: hull, hulls, hulled, hulling; will hull. Proper names are not vocabulary senses here. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (dictionary-informed qualitative editorial estimate; not a measured frequency).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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