shelf
n. countablen. a flat, horizontal board used for storing or displaying things. You usually find them on walls or inside cupboards and bookcases.
n. a flat, horizontal surface, typically made of wood, metal, or glass, fixed to a wall or inside a cabinet for the storage of objects.
I put the books on the top shelf.
The kitchen has several open shelves where we keep our most frequently used spices and jars.
The library's archive consists of miles of reinforced steel shelves, each meticulously labelled to ensure the preservation and retrieval of rare manuscripts.
From Middle English schelfe, probably from Old English sċylfe, sċilfe (“shelf, ledge, deck of a ship”), from Proto-West Germanic skilfijā, from Proto-Germanic skelfō (“shelf, ledge, cliff”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to cut”), distantly related to sculpt, carve and shell. Cognate with Dutch schelf (“hay loft, haystack”), German Low German Schelf (“haystack”), Old Norse skjalf (“bench”).
Of obscure origin; evidently identical to Middle English shelp (“sandbar in a river”), but the sound shift is unexpected. Shelp might be from Old English scylp (“crag”) or Middle Dutch schelp-.
The plural form is 'shelves'.
the shelfsthe shelvesNouns ending in -f often change to -ves in the plural; 'shelfs' is a common spelling error.