honeycomb
Americannoun
-
a structure of rows of hexagonal wax cells, formed by bees in their hive for the storage of honey, pollen, and their eggs.
-
a piece of this containing honey and chewed as a sweet.
-
anything whose appearance suggests such a structure, especially in containing many small units or holes.
The building was a honeycomb of offices and showrooms.
-
the reticulum of a ruminant.
-
Textiles.
-
Also called waffle cloth. a fabric with an embossed surface woven in a pattern resembling a honeycomb.
-
the characteristic weave of such a fabric.
-
adjective
verb (used with object)
-
to cause to be full of holes; pierce with many holes or cavities.
an old log honeycombed with ant burrows.
-
to penetrate in all parts.
a city honeycombed with vice.
noun
-
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
-
something resembling this in structure or appearance
-
zoology another name for reticulum
verb
-
to pierce or fill with holes, cavities, etc
-
to permeate
honeycombed with spies
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
honeycombsimple
-
honeycombssimple
-
have honeycombedperfect
-
has honeycombedperfect
-
am honeycombingprogressive
-
are honeycombingprogressive
-
is honeycombingprogressive
-
have been honeycombingperfect progressive
-
has been honeycombingperfect progressive
Past
-
honeycombedsimple
-
had honeycombedperfect
-
was honeycombingprogressive
-
were honeycombingprogressive
-
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:
To see how these materials were gathered, researchers added trace amounts of graphite to ordinary honeycomb.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 23, 2026
Would it be bamboo charcoal memory foam, a C-shaped full body or a honeycomb hole?
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 17, 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
She broke the honeycomb in half and gave me a piece.
From "Rump: The (Fairly) True Story of Rumpelstilskin" by Liesl Shurtliff
The group first used custom software to lay out a network of honeycombs, then tweaked them to include a few kinks, a bit like the bellows in an accordion.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 5, 2024
The video shows the plane gliding gently over the honeycombs of buildings dotting brown-green fields, before the man filming it turns the camera around and smiles.
From BBC ● Jan. 16, 2023
She never kicked up her feet and enjoyed honeycombs on a Saturday afternoon.
From New York Times ● Oct. 22, 2022
On this night there are handmade tablecloths by the artist Piero Golia next to jars of herbal anti-inflammatory salve created by Doctor Max, held together with beeswax made from the honeycombs on the grounds.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2022
There was a note standing in the box against a little pile of honeycombs.
From "Miracles on Maple Hill" by Virginia Sorensen
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
The forest itself, ten miles across, was a tangled thicket of trees and thorny underbrush honeycombed with German tunnels, concrete dugouts, and machine-gun nests that the Germans had spent four years fortifying.
From "The War to End All Wars: World War I" by Russell Freedman
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
They saw shadowy caves along the way, and tunnels honeycombing the cliff every which way.
From "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
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
The unequal shrinkage causes internal stresses in the wood as it dries, which results in warping, checking, case-hardening, and honeycombing.
From Seasoning of Wood by Wagner, J. B. (Joseph Bernard)
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.
