conch

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun Any of various tropical marine gastropod mollusks chiefly of the family Strombidae, having edible flesh and a large spiral shell often with a flared lip.
• noun The shell of one of these gastropod mollusks, used as an ornament, in making cameos, or as a horn.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun Abbreviations of conchology.
• noun A shell of any kind.
• noun Specifically, a large marine shell, especially that of the Strombus gigas, sometimes called fountain-shell, from its use in gardens.
• noun A spiral shell fabled to have been used by the Tritons as a trumpet, probably of the kind now constituting the genus Triton, and used as a musical instrument in the South Sea islands. Also conch-shell.
• noun A trumpet in the form of a sea-shell. Also called Triton's-horn.
• noun The external portion of the ear; the concha.
• noun In architecture, the plain, ribless, concave surface of a vault or pendentive; the semidome of an apse; the apse itself. See apse. Also called concha.
• noun [Also written conk, conck. konk.] One of the lower class of inhabitants of the Bahamas, and of the keys on the Florida reef: so named from their extensive use of the flesh from conchs as food.
• noun One of an inferior class of white inhabitants of some parts of North Carolina.
• noun Same as conk.
• noun In the cephalopod mollusks, the postembryonic shell: contrasted with protoconch or embryonal shell, and with shell, a term which loosely covers the entire external skeleton.
• noun The whelk, Fulgur carica
• noun the helmet-shell, Cassis.
• noun In Roman antiquity, the name for various small vessels used for oil, salt, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun (Zoöl.) A name applied to various marine univalve shells; esp. to those of the genus Strombus, which are of large size. Strombus gigas is the large pink West Indian conch. The large king, queen, and cameo conchs are of the genus Cassis. See cameo and cameo conch.
• noun In works of art, the shell used by Tritons as a trumpet.
• noun One of the white natives of the Bahama Islands or one of their descendants in the Florida Keys; -- so called from the commonness of the conch there, or because they use it for food.
• noun (Arch.) See Concha, n.
• noun The external ear. See Concha, n., 2.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun A marine mollusc of the family Strombidae which lives in its own spiral shell.
• noun The shell of this sea animal.
• noun A musical instrument made from a large spiral seashell.
• noun A machine (rather like a rotating pestle and mortar) used to develop the flavour and texture of chocolate by warming and grinding; a concher or concher machine.
• verb To refine the flavour and texture of chocolate by warming and grinding, either in a traditional concher, or between rollers.
• verb To play a conch seashell as a musical instrument, by blowing through a hole made close to the origin of the spiral.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun any of various edible tropical marine gastropods of the genus Strombus having a brightly-colored spiral shell with large outer lip