The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 5 letter word SHELL
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
S
H
E
L
L
More clues leading to the result SHELL
- Lug case left by old president
- Drop bombs on second place of torment
- Son having a nightmare sees skeleton
- Listener a woman will be fond of?
- Bombard Hull
- This lady’s going to Hull
- What’s left of building after the end of this inferno?
- Woman will fire shots from large gun
- Case husband found in market
- Skeleton causing son a nightmare
Buddy explains!

The straight part
We know that "Skeleton" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case skeleton = shell.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does SHELL mean?
SHELL noun- A hard external covering of an animal.
- The hard calcareous covering of a bird egg.
- One of the outer layers of skin of an onion.
- The hard external covering of various plant seed forms.
- The accreted mineral formed around a hollow geode.
- The casing of a self-contained single-unit artillery projectile.
- A hollow, usually spherical or cylindrical projectile fired from a siege mortar or a smoothbore cannon. It contains an explosive substance designed to be ignited by a fuse or by percussion at the target site so that it will burst and scattered at high velocity its contents and fragments. Formerly called a bomb.
- The cartridge of a breechloading firearm; a load; a bullet; a round.
- Any slight hollow structure; a framework, or exterior structure, regarded as not complete or filled in, as the shell of a house.
- A garment, usually worn by women, such as a shirt, blouse, or top, with short sleeves or no sleeves, that often fastens in the rear.
- A coarse or flimsy coffin; a thin interior coffin enclosed within a more substantial one.
- A string instrument, as a lyre, whose acoustical chamber is formed like a shell.
- The body of a drum; the often wooden, often cylindrical acoustic chamber, with or without rims added for tuning and for attaching the drum head.
- An engraved copper roller used in print works.
- The thin coating of copper on an electrotype.
- The watertight outer covering of the hull of a vessel, often made with planking or metal plating.
- (rigging) The outer frame or case of a block within which the sheaves revolve.
- A light boat whose frame is covered with thin wood, impermeable fabric, or water-proofed paper; a racing shell or dragon boat.
- A set of atomic orbitals that have the same principal quantum number.
- The outward form independent of what is inside.
- The empty outward form of someone or something.
- An emaciated person.
- A psychological barrier to social interaction.
- An operating system software user interface, whose primary purpose is to launch other programs and control their interactions; the user's command interpreter. Shell is a way to separate the internal complexity of the implementation of the command from the user. The internals can change while the user experience/interface remains the same.
- A legal entity that has no operations.
- A concave rough cast-iron tool in which a convex lens is ground to shape.
- A gouge bit or shell bit.
- The onset and coda of a syllable.
- A person's ear.
- To remove the outer covering or shell of something.
- To bombard, to fire projectiles at, especially with artillery.
- To disburse or give up money, to pay. (Often used with out).
- To fall off, as a shell, crust, etc.
- To cast the shell, or exterior covering; to fall out of the pod or husk.
- To switch to a shell or command line.
- To form shallow, irregular cracks (in a coating).
- To form a shelling.