Cylinder comes from Greek kýlindros meaning 'a roller', from kylíndein, 'to roll'. The deeper root *kʷel- ('to turn') also produced wheel, cycle, and colony — all things that revolve or circulate.
A solid or hollow geometric shape with straight parallel sides and a circular cross-section; a chamber in an engine.
From Latin cylindrus, from Greek kýlindros meaning 'a roller, a cylinder', from kylíndein meaning 'to roll'. The Proto-Indo-European root is *kʷel- meaning 'to turn, to move around', which is one of the most productive roots in English, also giving rise to wheel, cycle, collar, colony, and cultivate. The Greeks used kýlindros for any rolling object — a log used to move heavy stones, a roller for smoothing surfaces. The geometric sense was formalised later, when mathematicians needed a term for the shape traced
Cylinder, wheel, cycle, collar, colony, and cultivate all descend from the same Proto-Indo-European root *kʷel- meaning 'to turn'. A cylinder rolls, a wheel turns, a cycle repeats, and a colony was originally a farmer who turned the soil. In German, Zylinder also means 'top hat' — named for its cylindrical shape