cone

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Mathematics The surface generated by a straight line, the generator, passing through a fixed point, the vertex, and moving along a fixed curve, the directrix.
2. n. Mathematics A right circular cone.
3. n. The figure formed by a cone, bound or regarded as bound by its vertex and a plane section taken anywhere above or below the vertex.
4. n. Something having the shape of this figure: "the cone of illuminated drops spilling beneath a street lamp” ( Anne Tyler).
5. n. Botany A unisexual reproductive structure of gymnospermous plants such as conifers and cycads, typically consisting of a central axis around which there are scaly, overlapping, spirally arranged sporophylls that develop pollen-bearing sacs or naked ovules or seeds.
6. n. Botany A similar structure that produces spores on club mosses, horsetails, and spike mosses.
7. n. Botany Any reproductive structure resembling a cone, such as a cluster of hop or alder fruits.
8. n. Physiology One of the photoreceptors in the retina of the eye that is responsible for daylight and color vision. These photoreceptors are most densely concentrated in the fovea centralis, creating the area of greatest visual acuity.
9. n. Any of various gastropod mollusks of the family Conidae of tropical and subtropical seas, having a conical, often vividly marked shell and the ability to inflict a poisonous, sometimes fatal sting.
10. v. To shape (something) like a cone or a segment of one.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In geometry: A solid generated by the revolution of a right-angled triangle upon one of its sides as an axis. In the flgure thus generated the base is a circle, and the line passing through the vertex anil the center of the base (the axis) is perpendicular to the plane of the base; it is specifically termed a right cone.
2. n. A solid the surface of which consists of a circle, which forms its base, and the envelop of all the limited straight lines which join the circumference of the circle to a fixed point lying without the perpendicular to the circle from its center: specifically termed an oblique or scalene cone. See conic.
3. n. In modern geom., any surface generated by a line one point in which is fixed.
4. n. Anything shaped like a cone. Specifically— In botany, a dry multiple fruit formed of densely imbricate scales, as in the hop, but more especially in the pine, fir, and spruce, in which a pair of naked seeds is borne upon the upper side of each scale: technically called a strobile; in a more general sense, an inflorescence having a conelike shape. See cut on following page.
5. n. In anat.: The conarium, or pineal body of the brain.
6. n. One of the minute cone-shaped structures forming with the so-called “rods” a layer of the retina. See retina.
7. n. In conchology, a shell of the family Conidoe, characterized by its obconic form.
8. n. The hill surrounding the crater of a volcano, formed by the gradual accumulation of the ejected material.
9. n. A storm-cone.
10. n. The vent-plug in the barrel of a firearm.
11. n. In spinning, one of the taper drums in the head-stock of a mule, known respectively us the backing-off and drawing-up cones.
12. To shape so as to resemble the segment of a cone, as the tire or tread of a car-wheel.
13. n. The crystalline lens of the compound or faceted eye (ommateum) of an insect.
14. n. A pair of equal cones with parallel axes, but with the small base of one in line with the large base of the other, at such a distance that an endless belt on their surfaces or an idle transmitting-wheel between them can transmit power from one to the other. In either form the device may be used to transmit a varying velocity ratio by adjusting belt or wheel so that a large circumference of driver is opposite a small circumference of driver, or the reverse.
15. To bear cones: said of coniferous trees.

Wiktionary

1. n. geometry A surface of revolution formed by rotating a segment of a line around another line that intersects the first line.
2. n. geometry A solid of revolution formed by rotating a triangle around one of its altitudes.
3. n. topology A space formed by taking the direct product of a given space with a closed interval and identifying all of one end to a point.
4. n. A unit of volume, applied solely to marijuana and only while it is in a smokable state; roughly 1.5 cubic centimetres, depending on use.
5. n. slang The bowl piece on a bong.
6. n. slang The process of smoking cannabis in a bong.
7. n. slang A cone-shaped cannabis joint.
8. n. slang A passenger on a cruise ship (so-called by employees after traffic cones, from the need to navigate around them)
9. n. category theory Given a diagram F : J → C, a cone consists of an object N of C, together with a family of morphisms ψX : N → F(X) indexed by all of the objects of J, such that for every morphism f : X → Y in J, . Then N is the vertex of the cone, whose sides are all the ψX indexed by Ob(J) and whose base is F. The cone is said to be "from N to F" and can be denoted as (N, ψ).
10. v. pottery To fashion into the shape of a cone.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. (Geom.) A solid of the form described by the revolution of a right-angled triangle about one of the sides adjacent to the right angle; -- called also a right cone. More generally, any solid having a vertical point and bounded by a surface which is described by a straight line always passing through that vertical point; a solid having a circle for its base and tapering to a point or vertex.
2. n. Anything shaped more or less like a mathematical cone.
3. n. (Bot.) The fruit or strobile of the Coniferæ, as of the pine, fir, cedar, and cypress. It is composed of woody scales, each one of which has one or two seeds at its base.
4. n. (Zoöl.) A shell of the genus Conus, having a conical form.
5. v. To render cone-shaped; to bevfl like whe circwlar segoent of a cone.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a shape whose base is a circle and whose sides taper up to a point
2. n. a visual receptor cell in the retina that is sensitive to bright light and to color
3. n. cone-shaped mass of ovule- or spore-bearing scales or bracts
4. v. make cone-shaped
5. n. any cone-shaped artifact