▪ I. cube, n.1
(kjuːb)
[a. F. cube (14th c. in Littré) ad. late L. cubus, a. Gr. κύβος a cube, orig. a die for playing with.]
1. a. Geom. One of the five regular solids; a solid figure contained by six equal squares and eight rectangular solid angles; a regular hexahedron.
| [1398 Trevisa Barth. De P.R. xix. cxxvii. (1495) 928 Suche a fygure is callyd Cubus.] 1551 [see cubicly]. 1570 Billingsley Euclid xi. def. xxi. 318 A Cube is a solide or bodely figure contayned vnder sixe equall squares. 1692 Bentley Boyle Lect. ii. 58 Spheres, or Cubes, or Pyramids, or Cones. 1753 Hogarth Anal. Beauty 9 The most plain and regular forms, such as cubes and spheres. 1884 tr. Lotze's Logic 229 As the side of a cube increases, its volume must also continuously increase, without any alteration in its shape. |
b. A material body of this form; a cubical block of anything. e.g. of tea, sugar. Also attrib.
| 1626 Bacon Sylva §99 Take..a square Vessel of iron, in form of a Cube..put it into a Cube of Wood. 1863 Fawcett Pol. Econ. iii. v. 342 The Chinese use pressed cubes of tea. 1897 Sears, Roebuck Catal. 17/3 Sugar..Cubes. 1916 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 8 July 11/3 The vessel's cargo consists of 110 tons of corn, 50 tons of bean coffee, 1,000 cases of cube sugar, [etc.]. 1935 Discovery Aug. 240/1 Mr. Benn's host never went on an expedition without a large carton of cubes, which he handed out generously to those Mongolians whose tents they visited. |
c. An extremely conventional or conservative person (cf. square n.). So Cubesville (after Squaresville), a group or set of such persons. slang.
| 1959 J. Osborne Paul Slickey ii. viii, He's strictly from Cubesville. 1960 Wentworth & Flexner Dict. Amer. Slang 133/2 Cube, a super ‘square’;..an ultraconservative; a thorough bore. 1961 Woman 11 Mar. 5/1 No need to feel cubesville (that's worse than being a square) if you don't follow Kookie patter; even many Americans reckon it odd! 1963 Sunday Times 8 Sept. 29/3 As one who left school in July, I feel qualified to write of current oddities mentioned by ‘Old Squares’ (cubes in teenage slanguage). 1963 Telegraph (Brisbane) 24 May 17/2 Square itself is old hat. Too many adults cottoned on..the phrase and proclaimed ‘I'm a square’ in self defence. You'll simply be A Cube. 1968 ‘G. Bagby’ Corpse Candle x. 133 When I sang it to him..he told me I was a complete fool. Daisy Bell was for the cubes. |
2. Arith. and Alg. The product formed by multiplying any quantity into its square; the third power of a quantity.
| 1557 Recorde Whetst. C iv, When I saie twoo tymes twoo, twise, maketh 8. that number is a sounde number: and is named a Cube. 1646 Sir T. Browne Pseud. Ep. iv. xii. 219 By perfect and sphericall numbers, by the square and cube of 7 and 9 and 12. a 1721 J. Keill Maupertuis' Diss. (1734) 21 The periodical Times of the several Planets, are in proportion to the square Roots of the Cubes of their distances from the Sun. 1838 De Morgan Ess. Probab. 63 The sum of all the squares of numbers is nearly one third of the cube of the last number. |
3. a. attrib. (= cubic a. 2), and in Comb., as cube foot; † cube-bone = cuboid bone; cube-number, one that is the cube of an integer; cube-ore, a name for pharmacosiderite; cube powder, gunpowder made in large cubical grains; cube root, that number of which the given number is the cube; cube-spar, a name for anhydrite.
| 1570 Billingsley Euclid vii. def. xx. 187 A cube number is..that which is contayned vnder three equall numbers. 1615 Crooke Body of Man 1007 The heele is articulated into a sinus of the Cube-bone. 1696 Phillips, Cube Root. 1751 Halfpenny Designs Chinese Bridges ii. 8, 1040 Cube Feet of Timber. 1804 R. Jameson Char. Min. I. 571 Cube Spar. Ibid. II. 345 Cube-Ore. 1827 Hutton Course Math. I. 8, 3√5, or 5{oneon3}, denotes the cube root of the number 5. |
b. Sometimes used after a measure expressing the length of the edge of a cube; e.g. 6 feet cube = of cubical form, and measuring 6 ft. in each direction, i.e. containing 6 × 6 × 6 or 216 cubic feet.
| 1707 S. Clarke Third Defence (1712) 13 The Magnitude of a foot cube of Matter..is made up of Inches cube. 1776 G. Temple Building in Water 94 If the Pit was a Mile Cube. 1849 Dana Geol. ii. (1850) 74 Some of these were six feet cube. |
▪ II. cube, n.2
(ˈkuːbeɪ)
[Amer. Sp. cubé (also used).]
One of several South American plants of the genus Lonchocarpus, having roots which contain rotenone, used as an insecticide.
| 1924 Bull. U.S. Dept. Agric. no. 1201. 6 In 1920, while collecting fishes in Peru, Dr. W. R. Allen procured a supply of the dried roots of ‘cube’. 1930 Sci. Amer. Nov. 391 The cube plant now grows in a part of South America where the climate is similar to that of the Malay States. 1940 H. J. Holman Surv. Insecticide Mat. ii. 46 The bulk of the cube root and powder at present exported from Para and Manaos in Brazil is said to be derived from this species [sc. Lonchocarpus urucu]. 1960 Gunther & Jeppson Mod. Insecticides xii. 197 The name cubé is employed in South America to refer to the principal native species of Lonchocarpus, L. nicou and L. utilis, which were used for poisoning fish, and it has now been adopted in commerce to describe roots of any Lonchocarpus species which also display pronounced insecticidal properties. |
▪ III. cube, n.3 slang.
Brit. /kjuːb/, U.S. /kjub/
[Shortened <cubicle n. Compare cube n.1]
A small partitioned space for working, sleeping, etc.; a cubicle; spec. (in later use) an office compartment that is part of a larger open-plan workspace.
| 1937 E. Partridge Dict. Slang 196/1 Cube, a cubicle: at certain Public Schools, e.g., Charterhouse. c. 20. 1966 C. Glyn Unicorn Girl x. 71, I was spreading ash on the muddy track to the wash cubes that evening, when I heard someone in one of the cubes say my name. 1988 N. Baker Mezzanine (1990) 28, I walked to Tina's cube, on the outside wall of which was the sign-out board. 2003 A. N. LeBlanc Random Family xxi. 200 The inmate ‘cube’ facing hers belonged to a young Brazilian woman named Player. 2005 Oregonian (Nexis) 23 Mar. 12 She spends her days crunching numbers in a cube. |
Compounds. cube farm n. an office divided into cubicles.
| 1997 Los Angeles Times 2 June e3/2 Do you head for the *cube farm every weekday morning anxious about being Dilberted? 2006 Entrepreneur (Nexis) 1 Jan. 19 Employees gaze longingly at each other from across crowded cube farms. |
▪ IV. cube, v.
(kjuːb)
[corresponds to F. cuber (1554 in Hatzfeld) and prob. mod.L. cubāre, f. L. cubus cube.]
1. Arith. and Alg. To raise (a quantity) to the third power; to find the cube of.
| 1588 Lucas Colloq. Arte Shooting 62, I did cube those foure ynches and the Cube thereof was 64. 1765–93 Blackstone Comm. i. (ed. 12) 275 Superficial measures are derived by squaring those of length; and measures of capacity by cubing them. 1827 Hutton Course Math. I. 8, 83, denotes that the number 8 is to be cubed. |
2. Mensuration. To measure or compute the cubic content of.
| 1668 Phil. Trans. III. 686 He Cubeth or measureth either of the Segments of a Parabolical Conoid cut..parallel to the Axis. 1883 Pall Mall G. 22 Dec. 1/2, I have counted the inmates, cubed the rooms. |
3. To pave with cubes or cubical blocks.
| 1887 Daily News 22 Oct. 2/4 They declined to cube the roadway beyond the statutory 18 inches outside their tram-lines. |
4. To cut into small cubes.
| 1947 Home Institute Cook Book (N.Y.) 23 Cube, to cut into small cubes or solids of six equal square sides. 1951 Good Housek. Home Encycl. 354/1 Slice or cube and serve hot with melted butter. 1960 A. Wesker Kitchen 17 Cube stale bread for onion soup. |