Cube

How to spell cube

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cube

What does cube mean?

1. nounA solid shape with six equal square faces, or a small block of that shape.
2. verbTo multiply a number by itself twice, or to cut food into small square blocks.

Cube in a sentence

• noun

  She dropped a single cube of ice into the glass.

• verb

  The recipe asks you to cube the potatoes before roasting them.

• noun

  The children built a tower from one wooden cube at a time.

• verb

  To find the volume you cube the length of one edge.

Where does cube come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek kybos, which literally meant a six-sided die used in gaming and, by extension, any solid block with six square faces. The Greeks also used kybos in geometry for the regular solid we still call a cube, and from that mathematical sense came the idea of multiplying a number by itself three times. Latin took the word as cubus, and it passed into English through the French cube during the late 1500s, first among mathematicians and then in everyday speech. The plain spelling hides no real trap, though the silent shaping of the final 'e' and the 'y' glide in the sound are the only points that ever give a writer pause. A distant relative through the same dice-and-block imagery survives in words like 'cubicle', a small boxed-off space.

How the word is built

• cube (from Greek kybos: a six-sided die)
• no affix