Other forms: cylinders
A cylinder is the shape of a tin can: a circle at the top, the same circle at the bottom, straight sides joining them. A candle, a rolling pin, a roll of coins, a length of drainpipe.
The adjective is cylindrical. Away from geometry the word names two everyday objects — the cylinders of an engine, the tubes the pistons slide up and down in, so a four-cylinder car has four of them, and a gas cylinder, the heavy metal bottle holding oxygen or propane. A revolver's cylinder is the rotating part that carries the bullets, and a lock's cylinder is the barrel the key turns inside. In maths the volume is the circle's area times the height, the one formula most people still remember. Do not stretch the word to any tube at all: a cylinder is that particular shape, and a bent pipe is not one.
1nouncylinderA solid shape with matching circular ends and straight sides.
“Draw a cylinder and label its radius and height.”
2nounchamberThe chamber in an engine in which a piston moves.
“One cylinder was misfiring the whole way home.”
3nounmetalA metal container for gas held under pressure.
“The diver checked the pressure in her cylinder before going in.”
cylinder is a solid shape.
Cylinder is Greek for something that rolls. Ancient Greek κύλινδρος came from κυλίνδω, 'I roll', and travelled through Latin cylindrus and Middle French chilindre into English. The shape is named for what it does when you push it — and the same Greek word, taking a different road, arrived a second time as calender, the machine of heavy rollers that presses cloth and paper flat.
Ancient Greek
κύλινδρος
Latin
cylindrus
Middle French
chilindre
English, today
cylinder
From Middle French chilindre, cylindre, from Latin cylindrus, from Ancient Greek κύλινδρος, from κυλίνδω "I roll or wallow" (intransitive). a doublet of calander and calender.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA