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PlainSpell

cone

/ˈkoʊn/noun, verb

cone is spelled C-O-N-E: 4 letters and one syllable. It appears 6.8 times per million words in written English, the 9,165th most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As a noun, cone means “A surface of revolution formed by rotating a segment of a line around another line that intersects the first line” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). The plural of cone is cones.

How many letters and syllables are in cone?

Letters4: C-O-N-E
Syllables1 (from its American pronunciation)
In writing6.8 times per million words; the 9,165th most frequent word form
Wrong spellings searchednone measured in search
Rhymes with
Same letters

Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); rhymes and same-letter words are computed by PlainSpell from its own word list.

How common is cone?

Cone appears 6.8 times per million words in written English, the 9,165th most frequent word form in the list.

Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).

How do you pronounce cone?

  • UK /ˈkəʊn/
  • US /ˈkoʊn/
  • /ˈkon/

Cone has one syllable (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Tesco250-cone.wav, En-us-cone.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).

What rhymes with cone?

The 12 most written words on PlainSpell end in the same sounds as cone from its last stressed vowel (/oʊn/):

Spelled with the same letters in another order: once.

Computed by PlainSpell from the pronunciations in the English Wiktionary (dump of September 2, 2026): a rhyme shares every sound from the last stressed vowel to the end; ordered by written frequency (wordfreq 3.1).

Forms of cone

  • cones plural, present, singular, he/she/it
  • coning participle, present
  • coned participle, past

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What does cone mean?

The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).

noun

  1. 1

    A surface of revolution formed by rotating a segment of a line around another line that intersects the first line.

  2. 2

    A solid of revolution formed by rotating a triangle around one of its altitudes.

  3. 3

    A space formed by taking the direct product of a given space with a closed interval and identifying all of one end to a point.

  4. 4

    The fruit of a conifer or a similarly shaped fruit or flower head of certain other plants, such as banksias and proteas.

  5. 5

    A unit of volume, applied solely to marijuana and only while it is in a smokable state; roughly 1.5 cubic centimetres, depending on use.

  6. 6

    An ice cream cone.

  7. 7

    A traffic cone.

  8. 8

    slangA passenger on a cruise ship (that needs to be navigated around).

verb

  1. 1

    To fashion into the shape of a cone.

  2. 2

    To form a cone shape.

    Under the old method the material coned at the bottom of the borehole and as a result it would not go under houses and buildings.

  3. 3

    To segregate or delineate an area using traffic cones.

  4. 4

    To place a traffic cone on (a statue, etc.) as a prank.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Cone in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

LanguageWords
Frenchsurface conique, cône (surface of revolution), pomme de pin (fruit of conifers)
GermanKegel, Kegelmantel (surface of revolution), Zapfen (fruit of conifers), Konus (anything shaped like a cone)
Portuguesecone (surface of revolution), pinha, estróbilo (fruit of conifers)
Spanishcono (surface of revolution), cucurucho, alcartaz, cambucho (anything shaped like a cone)

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.

Where does cone come from?

From Middle English cone (“corner, angle”) and conoun (“cone”), from Medieval Latin cōnus, cōnon (“cone, wedge, peak”), from Ancient Greek κῶνος (kônos, “cone, spinning top, pine cone”). Reinforced by Middle French cone, from the same Graeco-Latin source.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

What to look up after cone