cell
Pluralcells
Pluralcells
- 1The basic unit of a living organism, made of protoplasm enclosed by a membrane and typically able to synthesize proteins and copy itself.
Under the microscope, each cell appeared as a distinct, membrane-bound unit.
The body repairs damaged tissue by producing new cells.
Note
Biology's building block sits at the base of a hierarchy. As Terence Allen and Graham Cowling put it in The Cell: A Very Short Introduction (2011), groups of cells form tissues, and tissues come together to form organs. Keep this sense apart from the botanical chamber, which is a cavity within a tissue rather than a living unit of one.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Terence Allen and Graham Cowling wrote The Cell: A Very Short Introduction and describe the hierarchy from cells to tissues to organs. en.wiktionary.org
- The book was first published in English in 2011. downloads.hindawi.org
- The botanical chamber sense denotes a cavity, distinct from a biological cell as a living unit. en.wikipedia.org
- 2
- 3A room in a prison or jail used to confine one or more inmates.
She spent three years in a cramped prison cell.
The cells along the corridor were all occupied.
- 4A device that produces an electric current from a chemical reaction, used singly or combined with others as the basic unit of a battery.
Each cell in the pack delivers about 1.5 volts.
Engineers tested how long the cells held their charge.
UsageThe technical word for one unit; in everyday talk most people say battery, as in two AAA batteries.
Note
Engineers keep a distinction here that everyday speech blurs. A cell is the single unit; a battery was once only a set of cells joined together, though the word now also covers a single cell.
- 5The unit in a spreadsheet or statistical table where a row and a column intersect.
Enter the formula in the top-left cell of the table.
The spreadsheet flagged several cells containing errors.
UsageYou enter something in a cell, and select or fill cells.
- 6A distinct section or compartment forming part of a larger structure.
Each cell of the egg carton holds a single egg.
The bridge deck is built from repeating box cells.
Similarcompartment, section
- 7A small group of people forming part of a larger organization, frequently a clandestine or outlawed one.
Each resistance cell operated independently to avoid detection.
Investigators traced funding to several sleeper cells abroad.
UsageCommon in terrorist cell and sleeper cell, a hidden group waiting to act.
- 8A region of radio reception served by one transmitter and forming part of a larger radio network.
As the train moved, the signal passed from one cell to the next.
Densely populated areas need smaller cells to handle the traffic.
Note
Radio networks divide their territory into cells, each a patch of reception within the whole. Talk about coverage tends to follow the same picture, with a signal handed on as a user moves from one cell to the next.
- 9A device that converts sunlight or any other light into electricity, usually one of many wired together in a solar panel.
A single cracked cell can drag down the output of an entire solar panel.
Engineers are testing a thin, flexible cell that turns ordinary indoor lighting into enough power for small sensors.
Similarphotocell
Note
A cell that makes electricity rather than one that keeps it: the battery cell stores power for later, while this kind produces it only while light falls on it. Because the bare word still suggests a battery to most readers, people usually say solar cell, or let a nearby mention of a panel make the meaning clear. One cell gives little power; the panel is what joins many into something useful.
Less common meanings
- 10A small, plain room or dwelling where a monk, nun or hermit lives alone.
The abbot visited each monk in his cell.
The convent's cells were sparsely furnished.
Note
The word is still in living use inside religious houses. Jennifer Worth, in Call the Midwife (2002), insists that a nun's bedroom "is properly called a cell," and she describes it as small, bare and plain. That bareness is part of the meaning. The word suggests austerity, not merely small size, which is why calling an ordinary spare room a cell sounds deliberately severe.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- Jennifer Worth wrote Call the Midwife. en.wikipedia.org
- Call the Midwife was first published in 2002. openlibrary.org
- Worth writes that a nun's bedroom is properly called a cell and describes it as small, bare and plain. en.wiktionary.org
- 11A single convective unit of rising and sinking air within a shower or thunderstorm, or a storm made up of one such unit.
Radar showed an isolated cell intensifying over the plains.
Several cells merged into a larger squall line by evening.
UsageUsed alone or in storm cell, thunderstorm cell, and convective cell; storms are called single-cell or multicell.
Similarstorm, thunderstorm
Note
Forecasters treat cells as units that can be counted and tracked, and that can strengthen or merge. Storms are described as single-cell or multicell, and a cell need not be small or form ahead of a front.
- 12To place or shut a person inside a cell, especially a prison cell.
Officers celled the suspect overnight before the morning hearing.
The warden decided to cell the two rivals on separate floors.
Similarjail, imprison, confine, incarcerate
Note
William Warner's Albion's England (1586) has a speaker "celled under ground," hidden away rather than jailed. That shows the verb once reached beyond prison talk to living shut away in seclusion.
- 13A small natural cavity or enclosed space inside the body or tissues of an animal or plant, each with its own particular function.
The fruit's central cell contained the seeds.
Each anther has two cells, and the pollen grains form inside them.
Similarchamber
Note
This was once a general biological use and is now chiefly a botanist's word. A cell here is any hollow or chamber with a job to do, not the living building block. Asa Gray's Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany speaks of "the two cells or lobes of the anther." When a botanical text counts the cells of an anther or fruit, read chambers, not microscopic units.
Checked 5 Nov 2026 · 3 facts
- This biological sense denotes functional chambers within tissues or organisms and is distinguished from the living structural unit. en.wiktionary.org
- Asa Gray's Introduction to Structural and Systematic Botany contains the quoted words. en.wiktionary.org
- Counts of cells in anthers and fruits can refer to chambers rather than microscopic biological cells. gutenberg.org
- 14Any of the supposed compartments of the brain, once believed to be the seat of particular mental powers, knowledge, or memories.
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, The Picture of Dorian GrayNote
A piece of abandoned anatomy, now obsolete: the brain was imagined as a set of rooms, each housing a faculty or a memory. William Cowper's The Task has village bells that open "all the cells / Where mem'ry slept." In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), a thought creeps "from cell to cell of his brain," and a modern reader may mistake that for the living unit. Where the brain is a house of faculties, read rooms, not neurons.
- 15Any small dwelling, especially a remote and solitary one; a secluded nook or den.
Note
A poetic word for any small, out-of-the-way home, now obsolete and chiefly literary. Walter Scott's The Lady of the Lake (1810) pictures Douglas hiding "like hunted stag, in mountain-cell." John Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essayes (1603) uses it to render the French caveau. In this sense the word carries seclusion rather than confinement: the cell is a refuge, not a punishment.
- 16An area of an insect's wing between veins, such as the large central discal cell of a butterfly or moth.
- 17The area of vaulting between the ribs of a vaulted roof or ceiling.
- 18A short packet of fixed length used to carry data, as in asynchronous transfer mode networking.
- 19The smallest unit of a cellular automaton, which can change state and follows a defined behavior.
- 20In FreeCell-type games, an open space that can temporarily hold a single card.
- 21The enclosed inner chamber of a classical temple, housing the cult image of the deity; a cella.
- 22Any of the three-dimensional faces (polyhedra) that form part of the boundary of a higher-dimensional polytope.
- 23A small monastery or convent that depends on and is governed by a larger religious establishment.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
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Origins
The root is Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- ("to cover"), which lies behind Latin cella ("chamber, small room, compartment"). That word became Old English cell and Middle English celle, with later support from Old French forms like cel and cele. Cella and hall are doublets.
Cellular phone was clipped to cell phone, and that was shortened again to cell; cellular phone itself is cellular plus phone.