Number & MeasureGreek → English
Cube
/kjuːb/noun
A solid with six equal square faces, or a number multiplied by itself twice.
The Greek roots
κύβος
kýbos
die, cube
Literally: “a six-sided die”
Follow a root:κύβος1 word
The story of the word
Kýbos was the gaming die before it was a shape, shaken from a cup in Athenian taverns. The line about the die being cast comes from Greek comedy, and Caesar is reported to have quoted it in Greek at the Rubicon rather than in the Latin the phrase is famous in. Mathematicians took the word for the solid and then for the third power. English borrowed the geometric sense in the 1500s.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 16th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
cubiccuboidcubism
In a sentence
Three cubed is twenty-seven, which he worked out by stacking the blocks.