Funnel

How to spell funnel

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce funnel

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does funnel mean?

1. nounA cone-shaped tube, wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, used to guide liquid or powder into a small opening.
2. verbTo guide or channel something, such as money, people, or liquid, towards a particular point.

Funnel in a sentence

• noun

  She used a funnel to pour the oil into the engine without spilling.

• verb

  The company planned to funnel profits back into research.

• noun

  A plastic funnel sat in the kitchen drawer next to the measuring jug.

• verb

  Barriers were set up to funnel the crowd towards a single exit.

Where does funnel come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word funnel traces back to the Latin verb fundere, meaning 'to pour', and more specifically to infundibulum, a Latin name for a pouring instrument built on infundere, 'to pour in'. From there it passed into Old Provencal (the language of southern France) as fonilh, and English picked it up in the late 1300s, partly through trade routes where wine merchants needed exactly such a cone for decanting. The single 'n' became doubled in English to keep the first vowel short, which is the very trap that catches modern writers. The same fundere root also gives us 'refund', 'fuse' and 'profuse', all carrying the idea of pouring or flowing. Because the spelling looks so plain, people often add an extra 'l' or drop one 'n', so it pays to remember the double 'n' and single 'l'.

How the word is built

• funn- (from Latin fundere, to pour)
• -el (noun suffix forming an instrument)