polyhedron

noun

poly·​he·​dron ˌpä-lē-ˈhē-drən 

plural polyhedrons or polyhedra ˌpä-lē-ˈhē-drə 

: a solid formed by plane faces

polyhedral

ˌpä-lē-ˈhē-drəl 

adjective

Illustration of polyhedron

Examples of polyhedron in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Perhaps the greatest long shot was the Bone Conductive Instrument, a wooden polyhedron designed to be held snugly to the breast, with the side of one’s face resting atop it, almost like an infant. —Matthew Sherrill, Harper's Magazine, 19 Feb. 2025

Euler implicitly assumed his polyhedra were convex, meaning a line segment joining any two points stayed completely within the polyhedron. —quantamagazine.org, 26 Jan. 2021

Mold that box into a pyramid or tetrahedron or any other everyday polyhedron. —Devin Powell, Discover Magazine, 20 Mar. 2019

This polyhedron is a classic prism made from professional-grade optical crystal glass. —Popular Science, 23 Oct. 2019

The 20th-century mathematician Aleksandr Aleksandrov proved that for every two-dimensional polygon, there is one unique way of folding it to form a 3-D polyhedron. —Quanta Magazine, 5 Jan. 2017

And the circle packing proof tells you that there’s a polyhedron that has all its edges tangent to a sphere. —Quanta Magazine, 19 Mar. 2018

The printer cranks out up to 150 polyhedra each year – everything from models of protein crystallography to Mars' topography. —Stacey Smith Lang, WIRED, 1 Nov. 2001

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from Greek polýedron, from poly- poly- + -edron -hedron

Note: The Greek word is attested in Euclid's Elementa, Book 12, Proposition 17.

First Known Use

1570, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for polyhedron

• octahedron
• tetrahedron
• dodecahedron
• icosahedron
• sanhedrin

Kids Definition

polyhedron

noun

poly·​he·​dron ˌpäl-i-ˈhē-drən 

plural polyhedrons or polyhedra -drə 

: a geometric solid whose faces are each flat polygons

polyhedral

-drəl 

adjective