Funnel - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

FUNNEL (through an O. Fr. founil, found in Breton, from Lat. infundibulum, that through which anything is poured, from fundere, to pour), a vessel shaped like a cone having a small tube at the apex through which powder, liquid, &c., may be easily passed into another vessel with a small opening. The term is used in metal-casting of the hole through which the metal is poured into a mould, and in anatomy and zoology of an infundibulum or funnel-shaped organ. The word is thus used generally of any shaft or passage to convey light, air or smoke, as of the chimney of an engine or a steam-boat, or the flue of an ordinary chimney. It is also used of a shaft or channel in rocks, and in the decoying of wild-fowl is applied to the cone-shaped passage leading from a pond and covered with a net, a "funnelnet," into which the birds are decoyed.