Cubes

How to spell cubes

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cubes

What does cubes mean?

1. nounMore than one cube: solid objects or blocks with six equal square faces.
2. verbCuts something into small cube shapes, or raises a number to the third power.

Cubes in a sentence

• noun

  She dropped a few ice cubes into the glass before serving the drink.

• verb

  The chef carefully cubes the carrots before adding them to the pot.

• noun

  The recipe asks for two stock cubes dissolved in boiling water.

• verb

  The formula cubes the input value to find the volume.

Where does cubes come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word goes back to the Greek kybos, which literally meant a six-sided die used in games of chance, and by extension any small cube-shaped block. The Romans borrowed it as the Latin cubus, keeping both the gaming sense and the geometric sense of a solid bounded by six equal squares. It reached English in the late 1400s, partly through French cube, first as a term of geometry and then as a label for the act of raising a number to the third power. The familiar everyday meanings, an ice cube or a stock cube, are far more recent and simply extend the old shape. The plural and verb form add a plain -s, and because the root already ends in a silent e, that e is kept before the s, giving 'cubes'.

How the word is built

• cube (from Latin cubus: a cube or die)
• -s (plural / third-person singular)