china shell (chinashel)

A collectors' name of the Ovulum ovum, given in allusion to the white porcelain-like surface of the shell. See china-shop (chi'nä-shop), n. A shop in which china, crockery, gla ware, etc., are sold. A bull in a china-shop, a person who commits great destruction or does great harm through ignorance, carele ne , or blind rage: from a story of a runaway bull breaking into a china-shop and smashing its contents in his furious movements. Now they are all away, let us frisk at our ease, and have at everything, like the bull in the china - shop . Thackeray , Book of Snobs, xviii.