Meaning & use
conical
Last updated
Meaning
adjectivecomparable
Having the form of a cone, with a round base that tapers evenly up to a point.
Grammar: Usually placed before a noun (a conical hat) or after a linking verb (the roof is conical); rarely graded.
Patterns
- conical in shape
- a conical something
The children wore tall conical hats decorated with stars for the party.
Snow slid easily off the conical roof of the old tower.
He poured the powder through a conical paper funnel into the jar.
Common combinations
- conical hat
- A conical hat shaded the farmer from the midday sun.
- conical flask
- The students swirled the solution in a conical flask.
- conical roof
- The turret had a slender conical roof covered in slate.
- conical in shape
- The volcano is almost perfectly conical in shape.
- conical pile
- Sand fell from the belt and formed a conical pile on the ground.
Synonyms and how they differ
- cone-shaped
- Cone-shaped is the plain, everyday way to say the same thing, while conical sounds a little more technical or descriptive.
- tapered
- Tapered only says that something narrows toward one end, whereas conical says the whole form is a cone with a circular cross-section.
- pointed
- Pointed focuses on the sharp tip alone and does not tell you anything about the overall round, widening body.
Opposites
Word family
- cone noun
- a solid shape with a circular base and one point at the top
- conically adverb
- in the shape of a cone
- conicity noun
- the degree to which something is cone-shaped (technical)
- conic adjective
- relating to a cone, as in conic section
Commonly confused: conical or cylindrical?
conical vs cylindrical
A cylindrical object keeps the same width from end to end, like a can, while a conical one narrows to a point.
Practice
Which object is best described as conical?
Choose one answer.
A traffic cone has a round base that narrows to a top, so it is conical. A straight-sided glass is cylindrical, a basketball is spherical, and a shoebox is rectangular.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “conical”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.