What are the two parts of a seashell called?

[leo12345]

Spent 20 minutes trying to find how the two parts of the seashell are called in English: halves, doors, shucks, flaps, leaves, valves?
No Wikipedia, no dictionaries give explanations about it.

For example, I can have a seashell, but I can also have a [half / one door] of a seashell.

Would appreciate any help...

 

[Skrej]

Re: How the two seashell parts are called?

I believe the scientific term is 'valve', so you'd have the right/left or top/bottom valve.

However, in common parlance, I think many people (including myself) just use the term 'half'. "I have half the shell."


You can't trust everything on Wikipedia, but there's the relevant entry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_(mollusc)

 

[Eckaslike]

Re: How the two seashell parts are called?

(Not a Teacher, but a first language English speaker from England):

Yes. These creatures, such as mussels, cockles, oysters etc, are all bivalve molluscs, because they have two half shells.
[h=1]Introduction to Marine Biology: By George Karleskint, Richard Turner, James Small[/h]
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...are the two halves of a shell called?&f=false

 

[Rover_KE]

Re: How the two seashell parts are called?

leo, please note my correction to your thread title in post #1.

 

[Raymott]

Re: How the two seashell parts are called?

I typed "shell anatomy" into Google search, and the second listing was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalve_shell

 

[Olympian]

Re: How the two seashell parts are called?

I typed "shell anatomy" into Google search, and the second listing was:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalve_shell

Raymott, thank you. It is always good to know how to find information. It is good to have access to Google, but I also need to know the how to search effectively/efficiently part. I would not have thought of the word 'anatomy'. I thought of 'structure', but searching on 'shell structure' gives results from the building design field. So, good to know about 'shell anatomy'.

Samuel Johnson said, "Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it. " Perhaps this needs to be modified as ".. or we know where and how we can find information upon it." ;-)