Other forms: hexagons
A hexagon is a flat shape with six straight sides. A regular hexagon has six equal sides and six equal angles, and it is the shape of a honeycomb cell.
That is not a coincidence: hexagons tile a surface with no gaps and use less wall for the area enclosed than squares or triangles, which is why bees build them and why they turn up in engineering. The adjective is hexagonal. Note the Greek number prefixes running through the family — pentagon five, hexagon six, heptagon seven, octagon eight — which are worth learning as a set because they recur everywhere in maths and chemistry.
1nounhexagonA flat shape with six straight sides.
“The tiles are hexagons and fit together with no gaps.”
hexagon is a shape.
Greek hex, six, plus gonia, an angle — so a hexagon is literally a six-angle rather than a six-side. Every -gon name counts corners, which is the same thing for a flat shape and a useful thing to notice.
Ancient Greek
ἑξάγωνον
Latin
hexagōnum
English, today
hexagon
From Latin hexagōnum, from Ancient Greek ἑξάγωνον. by surface analysis, hexa- + -gon. sexagon.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA