Shell nouns in English – a personal roundup

This paper provides a somewhat personal retrospect on work on the notion and phenomenon of shell noun. After a brief introduction I will discuss some terminological and methodological issues. Following some remarks on the classification of shell noun uses I will then report on recent work into the origin and diachronic development of shell nouns and shell-noun constructions, and discuss a number of other advances in the study of shell nouns since their introduction in the 1990s.