I don't think there's an official answer to this, but I'd say a shell is piece of software that lets you access an operating system while console and terminal n

I don't think there's an official answer to this, but I'd say a shell is piece of software that lets you access an operating system while console and terminal normally refer to hardware devices. Back when actual terminals (and consoles) were physically wired to computers, the shell was the program you ran on those devices. Today, all of these are synonyms for (what's normally) a command line (text) interface instead of a graphical one.