cylinder

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

• noun The surface generated by a straight line intersecting and moving along a closed plane curve, the directrix, while remaining parallel to a fixed straight line that is not on or parallel to the plane of the directrix.
• noun The portion of such a surface bounded by two parallel planes and the regions of the planes bounded by the surface.
• noun A solid bounded by two parallel planes and such a surface, especially such a surface having a circle as its directrix.
• noun A cylindrical container or object.
• noun The chamber in which a piston of a reciprocating engine moves.
• noun The chamber of a pump from which fluid is expelled by a piston.
• noun The rotating chamber of a revolver that holds the cartridges.
• noun Any of several rotating parts in a printing press, especially one that carries the paper.
• noun Archaeology A cylindrical stone or clay object with an engraved design or inscription.

from The Century Dictionary.

• To press under a cylinder or between cylinders.
• noun In geometry: A solid which may be conceived as generated by the revolution of a rectangle about one of its sides: specifically called a right cylinder.
• noun In mech.: That chamber of a steam-engine in which the force of steam is exerted on the piston. See steam-engine.
• noun The barrel of an air-pump.
• noun A hollow metallic roller forming part of certain printing-machines.
• noun The bore of a gun.
• noun That part of a revolver which contains the chambers for the cartridges.
• noun The central well around which a winding staircase is carried
• noun The body of a pump.
• noun In a loom, a revolving part which receives the cards. In the Jacquard loom it is a square prism revolving on a horizontal axis.
• noun In a carding-machine, a clothed barrel larger than an urchin or a doffer. See cut under carding-machine.
• noun In an electrical machine, a barrel of glass.
• noun In ordnance, a wooden bucket in which a cartridge is carried from the magazine to the gun.
• noun A garden- or field-roller.
• noun In antiquity, a cylindrical or somewhat barrel-shaped stone, bearing a cuneiform inscription or a carved design, worn by the Babylonians, Assyrians, and kindred peoples as a seal and amulet. Great numbers of such cylinders have been found, and also of Phenician imitations of them.
• noun An old portable timepiece of the class of sun-dials.
• noun [capitalized] In conchology, a genus of gastropods: same as Oliva.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

• noun A solid body which may be generated by the rotation of a parallelogram round one its sides; or a body of rollerlike form, of which the longitudinal section is oblong, and the cross section is circular.
• noun The space inclosed by any cylindrical surface. The space may be limited or unlimited in length.
• noun Any hollow body of cylindrical form.
• noun The chamber of a steam engine in which the piston is moved by the force of steam.
• noun The barrel of an air or other pump.
• noun (Print.) The revolving platen or bed which produces the impression or carries the type in a cylinder press.
• noun The bore of a gun; the turning chambered breech of a revolver.
• noun The revolving square prism carrying the cards in a Jacquard loom.
• noun (Anat.) See Axis cylinder, under Axis.
• noun (Paper Making) a machine in which a cylinder takes up the pulp and delivers it in a continuous sheet to the dryers.
• noun See Escapement.
• noun See Glass.
• noun See Roller mill.
• noun See Press.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun geometry A surface created by projecting a closed two-dimensional curve along an axis intersecting the plane of the curve.
• noun geometry A solid figure bounded by a cylinder and two parallel planes intersecting the cylinder.
• noun Any object in the form of a circular cylinder.
• noun A cylindrical cavity or chamber in a mechanism, such as the counterpart to a piston found in a piston-driven engine.
• noun A container in the form of a cylinder with rounded ends for storing pressurized gas.
• noun An early form of phonograph recording, made on a wax cylinder.
• noun The part of a revolver that contains chambers for the cartridges.