I. ˈkōn noun
( -s )
Etymology: Middle French or Latin; Middle French cone, from Latin conus, from Greek kōnos — more at hone
1.
a. : a mass of ovule-bearing or pollen-bearing scales or bracts in trees of the pine family and in cycads arranged usually on a somewhat elongated axis : a carpellate or staminate strobilus ; especially : the carpellate strobilus of pine and related trees — see coniferales
b. : any of several flower or fruit clusters suggesting a cone (as of the hop or certain magnolias)
2.
a. : a solid generated by the rotation of a right triangle about one of its legs as axis, the length of this leg being the altitude of the cone and the length of the hypotenuse of the right triangle its slant height — called also right circular cone
b. : a solid bounded by a circular or other closed plane base and the surface formed by line segments joining every point of the boundary of the base to a common vertex
c. : a conical surface : any surface traced by a moving straight line passing through a fixed vertex
3. : an object, part, or structure felt to resemble a geometric cone: as
a. : a natural formation built up around the crater of a volcano or the outlet of a geyser
basalt cone
spatter cone
b. : a steep alluvial or detrital fan
talus cone
gravity cone
c. : one of the short sensory end organs of the vertebrate retina that are the sole receptors present in the fovea and are scattered among the rods over most of the rest of the retina and that function chiefly or wholly in the light-adapted eye and are usually regarded as the only visual receptors concerned in color vision
d. : any of numerous somewhat conical tropical gastropod mollusks constituting the family Conidae — see conus
e. : any of certain conical or conoidal parts: as
(1) : cone pulley
(2) : an inner race for ball bearings
(3) : the portion of the bore of a shotgun that lies immediately forward of the chamber
(4) : a bobbin upon which yarn is wound preparatory to weaving or knitting it into a fabric ; also : the entire package of yarn and bobbin
f. : pyrometric cone ; often : the temperature or refractory range indicated by a particular combination of pyrometric cones
g. : an unblocked hat
h. : a cusp of a tooth especially of the upper jaw
i. : ice-cream cone
j. : cone speaker
k. : the cone-shaped part of a gas flame that is immediately adjacent to the source of gas
l. : a cone-shaped area of illumination (as from a searchlight)
[s]cone.jpg[/s] [
cone 1a: 1 Sitka spruce, 2 cryptomeria, 3 big tree, 4 white spruce, 5 redwood, 6 lodgepole pine, 7 Douglas fir, 8 bald cypress, 9 jack pine
]
II. verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
transitive verb
1. : to render cone-shaped : bevel like the slanting surface of a cone
cone the tires of car wheels
2. : to wind on a cone
cone a textile yarn
intransitive verb
1. : to form or bear cones (as of a pine tree)
2. : to form a cone (as of a whirling liquid)