Cell

Meaning

A single-room dwelling for a hermit..

Definitions by Sense

1. A single-room dwelling for a hermit.
2. (now historical) A small monastery or nunnery dependent on a larger religious establishment.
3. A small room in a monastery or nunnery accommodating one person.
4. A room in a prison or jail for one or more inmates.
5. Each of the small hexagonal compartments in a honeycomb.
6. (biology, now chiefly botany) Any of various chambers in a tissue or organism having specific functions.
7. (entomology) 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.

Example Sentences

So, taking them apart into his cell, / He to that point fit speaches gan to frame […].

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.

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.

The combatants spent the night in separate cells.

Each of the two cells or lobes of the anther is marked with a lateral line or furrow, running from top to bottom[…].

How soft the music of those village bells / […] With easy force it opens all the cells / Where mem'ry slept.

[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.

Word Forms

• cells
• celling
• celled

Synonyms for cell

Related Words

When Should You Use Cell?

Use cell when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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