Shell is a term derived from the Unix world. It refers to a command line interface like the DOS prompt. It also refers to the program that interprets the commands the user types at the command line. In modern GUIs, like Windows and Motif, it's not uncommon to have multiple shell windows open at one time. Different shells often understand a different set of commands.

The console is the particular shell or command line window where output fromSystem.outgoes and input fromSystem.inis read. It's normally the command line window from which the Java program was launched. Thus, two different Java programs may have different consoles on the same system.