A cowrie is a small, shiny sea shell, often smooth and egg-shaped, with a long thin opening on the underside. For a long time, in parts of Africa and Asia, people used these shells as money — they passed them from hand to hand the way we pass coins. Collectors still hunt for pretty ones. In everyday English the word names the shell, and that old use as money, more than the living animal, though the animal is a kind of sea snail. You will meet it in history books, museums, and beach talk. It is a quiet, old-world word, not slang.

寶貝螺（古時當錢用的那種叫貨貝）