cone

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
cone/kəʊn/

▶noun

• 1 an object which tapers from a circular or roughly circular base to a point.

  ■ (also traffic cone) a plastic cone-shaped object used to separate off sections of a road.

  ■ a cone-shaped wafer container in which ice cream is served.

  ■ the peak of a volcano.

• 2 the cone-shaped dry fruit of a conifer, formed of a tight array of overlapping scales on a central axis.

• 3 Anatomy one of two types of light-sensitive cell present in the retina of the eye, responding to bright light and responsible for sharpness of vision and colour perception. Compare with rod (sense 6).

▶verb (cone something off) Brit. separate off part of a road with traffic cones.

– derivatives
coned adjective.

– origin ME: from Fr. cône, via L. from Gk kōnos.