honeycomb
Americannoun
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honeycombs
plural
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a structure of rows of hexagonal wax cells, formed by bees in their hive for the storage of honey, pollen, and their eggs.
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a piece of this containing honey and chewed as a sweet.
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anything whose appearance suggests such a structure, especially in containing many small units or holes.
The building was a honeycomb of offices and showrooms.
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the reticulum of a ruminant.
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Textiles.
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Also called waffle cloth. a fabric with an embossed surface woven in a pattern resembling a honeycomb.
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the characteristic weave of such a fabric.
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adjective
verb (used with object)
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honeycombs,
present (3rd person singular)
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honeycombed,
past participle, past
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honeycombing
present participle
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to cause to be full of holes; pierce with many holes or cavities.
an old log honeycombed with ant burrows.
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to penetrate in all parts.
a city honeycombed with vice.
noun
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a waxy structure, constructed by bees in a hive, that consists of adjacent hexagonal cells in which honey is stored, eggs are laid, and larvae develop
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something resembling this in structure or appearance
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zoology another name for reticulum
verb
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to pierce or fill with holes, cavities, etc
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to permeate
honeycombed with spies
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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honeycombsimple
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honeycombssimple
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have honeycombedperfect
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has honeycombedperfect
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am honeycombingprogressive
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are honeycombingprogressive
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is honeycombingprogressive
-
have been honeycombingperfect progressive
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has been honeycombingperfect progressive
Past
-
honeycombedsimple
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had honeycombedperfect
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was honeycombingprogressive
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were honeycombingprogressive
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had been honeycombingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of honeycomb
before 1050; Middle English huny-comb, Old English hunigcamb. See honey, comb
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
That many are offered with highly Instagrammable toppings like fresh honeycomb has only added to their allure at a time when high inflation has led consumers to seek small indulgences.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 19, 2026
To see how these materials were gathered, researchers added trace amounts of graphite to ordinary honeycomb.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, in a vehicle optimized for precisely that purpose, the legs, designed with a crushable honeycomb interior, were supposed to contract.
From Slate ● Dec. 9, 2025
“The bristles would allow you to gently brush into all the little honeycomb sections or little divots,” Beitchman explained.
From Salon ● Mar. 22, 2025
He was a bee in a stone honeycomb, and someone had tom off his wings.
From "A Game of Thrones" by George R.R. Martin
Familiar tilings such as checkerboards and honeycombs repeat in a regular way.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 15, 2026
The “last grizzly killed” has several claimants: In Orange County, it was in February 1908, when a huge steel trap was laid for a bear that had been stealing honeycombs from hives.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 13, 2026
Keepers inside a new biosecurity zone will not be able to move hives, bees or honeycombs until further notice.
From BBC ● Jun. 28, 2022
She began to make pillows for her mother, stepfather and little brother with motifs of bees, honeycombs and cowboys.
From New York Times ● Jun. 5, 2022
In the greengrocery market, the stalls were overhung with date branches, cinnamon stalks, strings of dried orange peels, gunny-bags of pistachios, fresh pears, pomegranates, and boxes of honeycombs.
From "The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams" by Daniel Nayeri
It is a world that seems by its very nature to be pastoral and calm but which is honeycombed with problems, including climate change, competition from cultured honeybees, shrinking habitat and pesticides.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 23, 2022
The resulting porous crystal structure is so fully honeycombed with pockets that a chunk the size of a sugar cube can contain several football fields’ worth of internal surface area.
From Scientific American ● Nov. 17, 2021
The leopard-spotted, sturdy crust is honeycombed and foldable.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 18, 2021
The reservation is also honeycombed with non-tribal tracts thanks to a 19th-century law that encouraged Native Americans to become individual land owners, free to sell to anyone.
From Washington Post ● May 17, 2019
He bent expertly between barbed wire strands and crossed a wide, soggy, overgrazed field, part of which was honeycombed with treacherous hummocks and leached-out grass clumps.
From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols
There has been honeycombing and pinching and that sort of thing.
From Time Magazine Archive
Weird subterranean winds whistle through caves honeycombing the limestone, and whoosh with an eerie trumpeting from gaping blowholes.
From Time Magazine Archive
The idea that the maze was regenerating itself, honeycombing its way under the earth again and providing a spacious new home for monsters...that didn’t make him happy.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
They saw shadowy caves along the way, and tunnels honeycombing the cliff every which way.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
In the rusticated space that fills the sides, quaint sculptures of monsters and birds of foreign plumage may, or rather might have been traced, the honeycombing by weather has made them almost undiscoverable.
From In Troubadour-Land A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
