Shell vs. Bombard — What's the Difference?
By Maham Liaqat & Urooj Arif — Updated on March 16, 2024
A shell is a projectile fired from a gun, often explosive, used in warfare. A bombard is a large, ancient cannon used for sieging, firing heavy projectiles.
Difference Between Shell and Bombard
Table of Contents
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Key Differences
A shell is a type of ammunition that is typically cylindrical in shape, often filled with explosives, and designed to be fired from a large gun or cannon. These projectiles are used in various military contexts, including artillery, tanks, and naval warfare, to cause destruction upon impact or after a timed detonation. On the other hand, a bombard is a specific type of large cannon that was used primarily in medieval and early modern warfare. It was designed to fire heavy stone or iron balls and was often used in sieges to breach walls or fortifications.
Shells are made to be used in modern firearms and artillery, employing advanced technology to improve accuracy, range, and destructive power. They can be guided or unguided and may contain various payloads, including high explosives, incendiary material, or submunitions. Bombards, in contrast, are relics of early artillery technology, characterized by their massive size, low rate of fire, and the requirement for a large crew to operate. They represent the early stages of cannon development, where the emphasis was on delivering large projectiles over relatively short distances.
The technological advancement in artillery is evident when comparing shells to bombards. Modern shells are engineered to be part of sophisticated weapon systems, capable of precision targeting and causing specific types of damage to designated targets. This precision is achieved through the use of guidance systems and advanced materials. Bombards, however, were crude in their design and operation, with limited accuracy and range, reflecting the technological limitations of their time.
One significant difference between shells and bombards lies in their application and mobility. Shells are designed for use across a wide range of modern military platforms, from handheld firearms to aircraft-delivered munitions. This versatility allows for their use in various tactical and strategic contexts. Bombards, however, were stationary weapons, requiring a fixed position for firing due to their size and weight. They were moved with difficulty and were primarily used in set-piece battles or sieges.
While both shells and bombards are artillery-related, they belong to different eras of warfare technology. Shells are modern, versatile ammunition used in a wide array of military weapons, designed for precision and effectiveness. Bombards are ancient cannons, emblematic of the early development of artillery, used for besieging fortifications with their massive, but imprecise, projectiles.
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Comparison Chart
Definition
A projectile for firearms, often explosive.
A large medieval cannon for firing heavy projectiles.
Use
Modern warfare across various platforms.
Primarily medieval sieges and fortification breaches.
Technology
Advanced, including guided systems.
Early artillery, basic design.
Range and Accuracy
High, with precision capabilities.
Limited, generally inaccurate over long distances.
Mobility
Can be used in mobile and stationary weapons.
Stationary, requiring significant effort to move.
Compare with Definitions
Shell
Explosive projectile.
The artillery unit fired shells at the enemy positions.
Bombard
Ancient cannon.
The museum's bombard was used in the 15th century.
Shell
Part of sophisticated weapons.
The naval destroyer’s main guns can fire shells over 20 miles.
Bombard
Stationary weapon.
Once positioned, the bombard was rarely moved due to its weight.
Shell
Variety of payloads.
Some shells are designed to penetrate armor before exploding.
Bombard
Fired heavy projectiles.
The bombard could launch a stone ball weighing hundreds of pounds.
Shell
Used in modern warfare.
Shells are a common ammunition for tanks.
Bombard
Used in sieges.
Medieval armies used bombards to breach castle walls.
Shell
Precision targeting.
Guided shells can hit targets with high accuracy.
Bombard
Represents early artillery.
The bombard marks the beginning of cannon development in warfare.
Shell
The hard protective outer case of a mollusc or crustacean
Cowrie shells
The technique of carving shell
Bombard
To attack with bombs, shells, or missiles.
Shell
An explosive artillery projectile or bomb
Shell holes
The sound of the shell passing over, followed by the explosion
Bombard
To attack with a cannon firing stone balls.
Shell
Something resembling or likened to a shell because of its shape or its function as an outer case
Baked pastry shells filled with cheese
Pasta shells
Bombard
To assail persistently; harass
“[patients] bombarded with bewildering terms like ‘managed competition’ and ‘risk selection’” (Carla Cantor). ].
Shell
The metal framework of a vehicle body.
Bombard
A medieval primitive cannon, used chiefly in sieges for throwing heavy stone balls.
Shell
A light racing boat.
Bombard
(obsolete) a bassoon-like medieval instrument
Shell
An inner or roughly made coffin.
Bombard
(obsolete) a large liquor container made of leather, in the form of a jug or a bottle.
Shell
The hand guard of a sword.
Bombard
A bombardment.
Shell
Each of a set of orbitals around the nucleus of an atom, occupied or able to be occupied by electrons of similar energies
In a multi-electron atom, the lowest energy shells fill up first
An electron descending from one shell to a lower one emits an X-ray
Bombard
(music) A bombardon.
Shell
Short for shell program
Bombard
To continuously attack something with bombs, artillery shells or other missiles or projectiles.
The enemy's stronghold was bombarded for 3 hours straight.
Shell
Bombard with shells
Several villages north of the security zone were shelled
Bombard
(figuratively) To attack something or someone by directing objects at them.
Shell
Remove the shell or pod from (a nut or seed)
They were shelling peas
Shelled Brazil nuts
Bombard
(figuratively) To continuously send or direct (at someone)
I was bombarded with WhatsApp messages after appearing on the news.
Please don't bombard me with questions right now, I'll answer them at the end of the statement.
Shell
The usually hard outer covering that encases certain organisms, such as insects, turtles, and most mollusks.
Bombard
(physics) To direct at a substance an intense stream of high-energy particles, usually sub-atomic or made of at most a few atoms.
Shell
A similar outer covering on a nut or seed.
Bombard
A piece of heavy ordnance formerly used for throwing stones and other ponderous missiles. It was the earliest kind of cannon.
They planted in divers places twelve great bombards, wherewith they threw huge stones into the air, which, falling down into the city, might break down the houses.
Shell
A similar outer covering on certain eggs, such as those of birds and reptiles; an eggshell.
Bombard
A bombardment.
Shell
The material that constitutes such a covering.
Bombard
A large drinking vessel or can, or a leather bottle, for carrying liquor or beer.
Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.
Shell
An external, usually hard, protective or enclosing case or cover.
Bombard
Padded breeches.
Shell
A framework or exterior, as of a building.
Bombard
See Bombardo.
Shell
A thin layer of pastry.
Bombard
To attack with bombards or with artillery; especially, to throw shells, hot shot, etc., at or into.
Next, she means to bombard Naples.
His fleet bombarded and burnt down Dieppe.
Shell
The external part of the ear.
Bombard
A large shawm; the bass member of the shawm family
Shell
The hull of a ship.
Bombard
Cast, hurl, or throw repeatedly with some missile;
They pelted each other with snowballs
Shell
A light, long, narrow racing boat propelled by rowers.
Bombard
Throw bombs at or attack with bombs;
The Americans bombed Dresden
Shell
A small glass for beer.
Shell
An artillery projectile containing an explosive charge.
Shell
A metal or cardboard case containing the charge and primer for a piece of firearms ammunition, especially one also containing shot and fired from a shotgun.
Shell
An attitude or a manner adopted to mask one's true feelings or to protect one from perceived or real danger
Embarrassed, she withdrew into a shell.
Shell
A set of electron orbitals having nearly the same energy and sharing the same first quantum number.
Shell
Any of the stable states of other particles or collections of particles (such as the nucleons in an atomic nucleus) at a given energy or small range of energies.
Shell
A usually sleeveless and collarless, typically knit blouse.
Shell
A thin, usually waterproof or windproof outer garment for the upper body.
Shell
(Computers) A program that works with the operating system as a command processor, used to enter commands and initiate their execution.
Shell
A company or corporation created by a second company or corporation for the purposes of facilitating a particular transaction, especially one that is intended to be concealed.
Shell
To remove the shell of; shuck
Shell oysters.
Shell
To remove from a shell
Shell peas.
Shell
To separate the kernels of (corn) from the cob.
Shell
To fire shells at; bombard.
Shell
To defeat decisively.
Shell
(Baseball) To hit the pitches of (a pitcher) hard and with regularity
Shelled the pitcher for eight runs in the first inning.
Shell
To shed or become free of a shell.
Shell
To look for or collect shells, as on a seashore
Spent the day shelling on Cape Cod.
Shell
A hard external covering of an animal.
Shell
The calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates.
In some mollusks, as the cuttlefish, the shell is concealed by the animal's outer mantle and is considered internal.
Genuine mother-of-pearl buttons are made from sea shells.
Shell
(by extension) Any mollusk having such a covering.
Shell
(entomology) The exoskeleton or wing covers of certain insects.
Shell
The conjoined scutes that constitute the "shell" (carapace) of a tortoise or turtle.
Shell
The overlapping hard plates comprising the armor covering the armadillo's body.
Shell
The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.
Shell
One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.
The restaurant served caramelized onion shells.
Shell
(botany) The hard external covering of various plant seed forms.
Shell
The covering, or outside part, of a nut.
The black walnut and the hickory nut, both of the same Genus as the pecan, have much thicker and harder shells than the pecan.
Shell
A pod containing the seeds of certain plants, such as the legume Phaseolus vulgaris.
Shell
(geology) The accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.
Shell
(weaponry) The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.
Shell
(weaponry) A hollow, usually spherical or cylindrical projectile fired from a siege mortar or a smoothbore cannon. It contains an explosive substance designed to be ignited by a fuse or by percussion at the target site so that it will burst and scatter at high velocity its contents and fragments. Formerly called a bomb.
Shell
(weaponry) The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.
Shell
(architecture) Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in, as the shell of a house.
Shell
A garment, usually worn by women, such as a shirt, blouse, or top, with short sleeves or no sleeves, that often fastens in the rear.
Shell
A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.
Shell
(music) A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.
The first lyre may have been made by drawing strings over the underside of a tortoise shell.
Shell
(music) The body of a drum; the often wooden, often cylindrical acoustic chamber, with or without rims added for tuning and for attaching the drum head.
Shell
An engraved copper roller used in print works.
Shell
The thin coating of copper on an electrotype.
Shell
(nautical) The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.
Shell
The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
Shell
(nautical) A light boat whose frame is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.
Shell
(chemistry) A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.
Shell
(figuratively) The outward form independent of what is inside.
Shell
(figuratively) The empty outward form of someone or something.
The setback left him a mere shell; he was never the same again.
Shell
An emaciated person.
He's lost so much weight from illness; he's a shell of his former self.
Shell
A psychological barrier to social interaction.
Even after months of therapy he's still in his shell.
Shell
(computing) An operating system software user interface, whose primary purpose is to launch other programs and control their interactions; the user's command interpreter. Shell is a way to separate the internal complexity of the implementation of the command from the user. The internals can change while the user experience/interface remains the same.
Shell
(business) A legal entity that has no operations.
A shell corporation was formed to acquire the old factory.
Shell
A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
Shell
(engineering) A gouge bit or shell bit.
Shell
(phonology) The onset and coda of a syllable.
Shell
A person's ear.
Can I have a quick word in your shell?
Shell
To remove the outer covering or shell of something.
Shell
To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
The guns shelled the enemy trenches.
Shell
(informal) To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
Shell
(intransitive) To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
Shell
(intransitive) To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
Nuts shell in falling.
Wheat or rye shells in reaping.
Shell
To switch to a shell or command line.
Shell
To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).
Shell
(topology) To form a shelling.
Shell
The hard calcareous or chitinous external covering of mollusks, crustaceans, and some other invertebrates. In some mollusks, as the cuttlefishes, it is internal, or concealed by the mantle. Also, the hard covering of some vertebrates, as the armadillo, the tortoise, and the like.
Shell
A hollow projectile, of various shapes, adapted for a mortar or a cannon, and containing an explosive substance, ignited with a fuse or by percussion, by means of which the projectile is burst and its fragments scattered. See Bomb.
Shell
The case which holds the powder, or charge of powder and shot, used with breechloading small arms.
Shell
Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in; as, the shell of a house.
Shell
A coarse kind of coffin; also, a thin interior coffin inclosed in a more substantial one.
Shell
An instrument of music, as a lyre, - the first lyre having been made, it is said, by drawing strings over a tortoise shell.
When Jubal struck the chorded shell.
Shell
An engraved copper roller used in print works.
Shell
The husks of cacao seeds, a decoction of which is often used as a substitute for chocolate, cocoa, etc.
Shell
The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
Shell
A light boat the frame of which is covered with thin wood or with paper; as, a racing shell.
Shell
Something similar in form or action to an ordnance shell;
Shell
A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
Shell
A gouge bit or shell bit.
Shell
To strip or break off the shell of; to take out of the shell, pod, etc.; as, to shell nuts or pease; to shell oysters.
Shell
To separate the kernels of (an ear of Indian corn, wheat, oats, etc.) from the cob, ear, or husk.
Shell
To throw shells or bombs upon or into; to bombard; as, to shell a town.
Shell
To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
Shell
To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk; as, nuts shell in falling.
Shell
To be disengaged from the ear or husk; as, wheat or rye shells in reaping.
Shell
Ammunition consisting of a cylindrical metal casing containing an explosive charge and a projectile; fired from a large gun
Shell
The material that forms the hard outer covering of many animals
Shell
Hard outer covering or case of certain organisms such as arthropods and turtles
Shell
The hard usually fibrous outer layer of some fruits especially nuts
Shell
The exterior covering of a bird's egg
Shell
A rigid covering that envelops an object;
The satellite is covered with a smooth shell of ice
Shell
A very light narrow racing boat
Shell
The housing or outer covering of something;
The clock has a walnut case
Shell
A metal sheathing of uniform thickness (such as the shield attached to an artillery piece to protect the gunners)
Shell
The hard largely calcareous covering of a mollusc
Shell
Use explosives on;
The enemy has been shelling us all day
Shell
Fall out of the pod or husk;
The corn shelled
Shell
Hit the pitches of hard and regularly;
He shelled the pitcher for eight runs in the first inning
Shell
Look for and collect shells by the seashore
Shell
Come out better in a competition, race, or conflict;
Agassi beat Becker in the tennis championship
We beat the competition
Harvard defeated Yale in the last football game
Shell
Remove from its shell or outer covering;
Shell the legumes
Shell mussels
Shell
Remove the husks from;
Husk corn
Common Curiosities
Can shells be used in any gun?
Shells are designed for specific types of firearms and artillery, so they must match the weapon’s specifications.
What is a shell?
A shell is an explosive projectile used in modern warfare, designed to be fired from guns or cannons.
What is a bombard?
A bombard is an ancient type of large cannon, used especially during medieval times for sieging and breaching fortifications.
How do shells differ from bombards?
Shells are modern, precise, and used in a variety of weapons, while bombards are historical cannons for firing large, imprecise projectiles.
What types of projectiles did bombards fire?
Bombards primarily fired heavy stone or iron balls.
Were bombards mobile?
Bombards were largely stationary due to their massive size and weight, making them difficult to move.
How were bombards used in medieval warfare?
In medieval warfare, bombards were used to break down walls or fortifications during sieges.
What made bombards effective in their time?
Despite their limitations, bombards were effective due to their ability to launch heavy projectiles that could cause significant damage to structures.
Did bombards have any advantages over modern artillery?
The main advantage of bombards was their ability to project massive force, albeit imprecisely, which was significant for their time.
Are shells always explosive?
While many shells are explosive, some are designed for specific purposes like armor penetration or incendiary effects and may not explode in the traditional sense.
Is the term "shell" used for non-explosive ammunition?
Typically, "shell" refers to explosive ammunition, but the term can broadly encompass various types of artillery projectiles.
How has artillery evolved from bombards to shells?
Artillery evolved from the simple, imprecise bombards to highly sophisticated weapons firing precise shells, reflecting advances in technology and tactics.
What impact did bombards have on the development of artillery?
Bombards represented an early stage in artillery development, paving the way for the evolution of more advanced and precise weaponry.
How do the firing mechanisms of shells and bombards differ?
Shells are used with modern firing mechanisms that allow for rapid and precise delivery, whereas bombards relied on primitive gunpowder ignition.
Why are shells preferred in modern warfare?
Shells offer precision, versatility, and effectiveness, making them suitable for a wide range of military applications.
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Written by
Maham Liaqat
Co-written by
Urooj ArifUrooj is a skilled content writer at Ask Difference, known for her exceptional ability to simplify complex topics into engaging and informative content. With a passion for research and a flair for clear, concise writing, she consistently delivers articles that resonate with our diverse audience.
