Word.ws English Dictionary

cell

/sɛl/

cell noun: a single-room dwelling for a hermit.

cell: a single-room dwelling for a hermit
Image: John Salatas, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

cell (plural cells)

  1. A single-room dwelling for a hermit.
    • So, taking them apart into his cell, / He to that point fit speaches gan to frame […].1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • For three days he and his attendants had wandered in the forest without seeing a human form: but on the evening of the third they came to a cell, in which they found a venerable hermit in the agonies of death.1764, Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, section IV
  2. (historical) A small monastery or nunnery dependent on a larger religious establishment.
  3. A small room in a monastery or nunnery accommodating one person.
    • Gregor Mendel must have spent a good amount of time outside of his cell.
    • A nunʼs bedroom is properly called a cell and is small, bare, and plain, without comfort.2002, Jennifer Worth, Call the Midwife, Phoenix (2012), page 315
  4. A room in a prison or jail for one or more inmates.
    • The combatants spent the night in separate cells.
    Synonyms:
    prison cell
  5. Each of the small hexagonal compartments in a honeycomb.
  6. Any of various chambers in a tissue or organism having specific functions.
    • Each of the two cells or lobes of the anther is marked with a lateral line or furrow, running from top to bottom[…].1858, Asa Gray, Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany, fifth edition, p. 282
  7. The discal cell of the wing of a lepidopteran insect.
  8. (obsolete) Specifically, any of the supposed compartments of the brain, formerly thought to be the source of specific mental capacities, knowledge, or memories.
    • How soft the music of those village bells / […] With easy force it opens all the cells / Where mem'ry slept.1782–1785, William Cowper, “(please specify the page)”, in The Task, a Poem, […], London: […] J[oseph] Johnson; […], →OCLC
    • [W]e shall feel still more contempt for the order of men, who cultivated their faculties, only to enable them to consolidate their power, by leading the ignorant astray; making the learning they concentrated in their cells, a more polished instrument of oppression.1794, Mary Wollstonecraft, An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution
  9. A section or compartment of a larger structure.
  10. (literary, obsolete) Any small dwelling; a remote nook, a den.
    • Thou seest but the order and policie of this little Cell [translating caveau] wherein thou art placed[…].1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC
    • Not long shall honour'd Douglas dwell, / Like hunted stag, in mountain-cell[…].1810, Walter Scott, “Canto II. The Island.”, in The Lady of the Lake; […], Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for John Ballantyne and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and William...
  11. A device which stores electrical power; used either singly or together in batteries; the basic unit of a battery.
    • This MP3 player runs on 2 AAA cells.
  12. The basic unit of a living organism, consisting of a quantity of protoplasm surrounded by a cell membrane, which is able to synthesize proteins and replicate itself.
    • An American company has applied to experiment in Britain on Parkinson's disease sufferers by injecting their brains with cells from pigs.1999 February 15, Paul Brown, Dave King, The Guardian
    • In multicellular organisms, groups of cells form tissues and tissues come together to form organs.2011, Terence Allen, Graham Cowling, The Cell: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, page 3
Show 11 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. A small thunderstorm, caused by convection, that forms ahead of a storm front.
    • There is a powerful storm cell headed our way.
  2. The minimal unit of a cellular automaton that can change state and has an associated behavior.
    • The upper right cell always starts with the color green.
    • Basically, I'm looking for a fast (the fastest?) way of updating grids, where each cell has to look at an arbitrary number of its neighbors.1988 January 26, David Hiebeler, “Fast way to update grids”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet)
  3. In FreeCell-type games, a space where one card can be placed.
  4. A small group of people forming part of a larger organization, often an outlawed one.
    • Those three fellows are the local cell of that organization.
    • Salarian intelligence field agents are grouped into an organization called the Special Tasks Group. STG operators work in independent cells, performing dangerous missions such as counter-terrorism, infiltration, reconnaissance, assassination, and sabotage.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Salarians: Special Tasks Group Codex entry
  5. A short, fixed-length packet, as in asynchronous transfer mode.
    • Virtual Channel number 5 received 170 cells.
  6. A region of radio reception, or the group of devices that uses it, that is a part of a larger radio network.
    • I get good reception in my home because it is near a cell tower.
  7. A three-dimensional facet of a polytope.
  8. The unit in a statistical array (a spreadsheet, for example) where a row and a column intersect.
  9. The space between the ribs of a vaulted roof.
  10. A cella.
  11. An area of an insect wing bounded by veins.

Verb

cell (third-person singular simple present cells, present participle celling, simple past and past participle celled)

  1. (transitive) To place or enclose in a cell.
    • Myself a recluse from the world, And celled under ground, Lest that the gould, the precious stones, And pleasures, here be found1586, William Warner, Albion's England

Noun (2)

cell (plural cells)

  1. (Australia, India, New Zealand, Philippines, US, informal) A cellular phone.

cell meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

cell in Hindi

biological cavity
कोशिका kośikā
basic unit of a living organism
कोशिका kośikā
minimal unit of a cellular automaton that can change state and has an associated behavior
कोशिका kośikā

cell in Tamil

room in a prison for containing inmates
அறை aṟai
basic unit of a living organism
உயிரணு uyiraṇu, செல் cel

cell in Marathi

basic unit of a living organism
पेशी peśī

cell in Urdu

basic unit of a living organism
خَلِیَّہ xaliyya
More languagesFewer languages
cell in Bengali
কোষ kōś
cell in Telugu
కణము kaṇamu, సెల్ sel
cell in Malayalam
ജയിലറ jayilaṟa, കോശം kōśaṁ
cell in Kannada
ಜೀವಕೋಶ jīvakōśa
cell in Punjabi
ਸੈੱਲ
cell in Gujarati
કોષ, સેલ, કોષને
cell in Odia
କୋଷ, ସେଲ
cell in Sinhala
සෛල saila
cell in Assamese
কোষ küx
cell in Nepali
सेल, सेलमा
cell in Pashto
ژوندينکه, ژونکه, خونګۍ xungǝ́y, کوټنۍ koṭanǝ́y
cell in Tagalog
selula
cell in Arabic
خَلِيَّة ḵaliyya, زِنْزَانَة zinzāna, صَوْمَعَة ṣawmaʕa, كِرْح kirḥ
cell in Malay
sel
cell in Indonesian
sel, telepon seluler
cell in Thai
กรง grong, กุฎี gù-dii, เซลล์ seel, เซล seel
cell in Vietnamese
phòng giam, phòng tù, tế bào
cell in Myanmar
အချုပ်ခန်း a.hkyuphkan:, ကလာပ်စည်း ka.lapcany:

Examples of cell in a sentence

  • From cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.1890, Oscar Wilde, chapter XVI, in The Picture of Dorian Gray:
  • I've seen this space colloquially referred to as MAP (presumably since it maps a 3x3 neighborhood into a future cell state)2022 February 11, Mateon1, “Game of Life with real 8 neighbors”, in comp.theory.cell-automata (Usenet):

All 40 example sentences with cell

Synonyms of cell

Forms of cell

Noun
pluralcells
Verb
third-person singular presentcells
present participlecelling
past participlecelled
pastcelled

Plural of cell: cells

Origin of cell

From Middle English celle, selle, from Old English cell (attested in inflected forms), from Latin cella (“chamber, small room, compartment”), later reinforced by Old French cel, sele, Old French cele. Ultimately from Proto-Italic *kelnā, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱelneh₂, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to cover”). Doublet of cella and hall.

Ellipsis of cell phone, itself a clipping of cellular phone, from cellular + phone.

Words formed from cell

Phrases with cell

157 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with cell

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about cell

What does cell mean?
Cell means a single-room dwelling for a hermit.
What is cell in Hindi?
Cell in Hindi is कोशिका (kośikā). See Cell meaning in Hindi.
How do you use cell in a sentence?
From cell to cell of his brain crept the one thought; and the wild desire to live, most terrible of all man's appetites, quickened into force each trembling nerve and fibre.
What part of speech is cell?
Cell can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce cell?
Cell is pronounced /sɛl/.
What is the plural of cell?
The plural of cell is cells.

Words near cell in the dictionary

  1. celiotomy
  2. celiprolol
  3. Celis
  4. celivarone
  5. Celje
  6. cell
  7. cell adhesion molecule
  8. cell adhesion molecules
  9. cell block
  10. cell blocks
  11. cell bodies

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cell (page history and authors); cell (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cell (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); cell (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); কোষ (Assamese) (page history and authors); cell (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-cell.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cell.wav.

Cite this entry: “cell.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cell. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.