cube
pronunciation
How to pronounce cube in British English:
UK [kjuːb]
How to pronounce cube in American English:
US [kjuːb]
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- Noun:
- a three-dimensional shape with six square or rectangular sides
- a hexahedron with six equal squares as faces
- the product of three equal terms
- any of several tropical American woody plants of the genus Lonchocarpus whose roots are used locally as a fish poison and commercially as a source of rotenone
- a block in the (approximate) shape of a cube
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- Verb:
- raise to the third power
- cut into cubes
Word Origin
- cube
- cube: [16] Greek kúbos meant literally ‘six-sided solid figure’, a sense handed down to English via Latin cubus. Apart from more obvious metaphorical applications, such as ‘dice’, the Greek word was used for the internal cavity of the pelvis, a semantic feature which links it with its possible relative, English hip. The fine-art term cubism was introduced to English in 1911 from French, where it seems to have been coined in 1908 by an anonymous member of the Hanging Committee of the Salon des Independents. The story goes that when a painting by Georges Braque was being shown to the committee, he exclaimed ‘Encore des Cubes! Assez de cubisme!’.
- cube (n.)
- 1550s, from Middle French cube (13c.) and directly from Latin cubus, from Greek kybos "a cube, a six-sided die, vertebra," perhaps from PIE root *keu(b)- "to bend, turn." Mathematical sense is from 1550s in English (it also was in the ancient Greek word: the Greeks threw with three dice; the highest possible roll was three sixes).
- cube (v.)
- 1580s in the mathematical sense; 1947 with meaning "cut in cubes," from cube (n.). The Greek verbal derivatives from the noun all referred to dice-throwing and gambling. Related: Cubed; cubing.
Synonym
Example
- 1. Occasionally a colorful cube flew past the bears .
- 2. Most 3-d printer operators advise that your first project should be a cube to test machine calibration .
- 3. It is a cube 10cm on a side , with standard electrical , physical and launch parameters .
- 4. It produced a powerful desktop computer , a stylish black cube , and its initial market was going to be in education .
- 5. Priced at $ 1299 , the cube prints by depositing a thin layer of material from cartridges , which come in different colours .