oven
Americannoun
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ovens
plural
noun
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an enclosed heated compartment or receptacle for baking or roasting food
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a similar device, usually lined with a refractory material, used for drying substances, firing ceramics, heat-treating, etc
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of oven
before 900; Middle English; Old English ofen; cognate with German Ofen, Old Norse ofn
Explanation
An oven is a device for baking food using heat. You probably scramble eggs on your stove but bake cupcakes in your oven. Most ovens are in kitchens, whether in private homes or restaurants. Every once in a while, you'll see an outdoor bread or pizza oven too — these are built of brick, stone, or clay, and can safely get hot enough to bake at very high temperatures. Another kind of oven is one that's used for baking ceramics, which is also called a kiln or sometimes a furnace. The very oldest ovens were built thousands of years ago in Central and Eastern Europe.
Vocabulary lists containing oven
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:
"There are more safety rules for a carton of milk than for AI. There are more safety rules for your oven than for AI," he told the conference.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2026
You can build a similar kind of depth on the stovetop, of course, but the oven does a lot of the work for you.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2026
Temperatures below 200 degrees Celsius are comparable to those found inside a conventional kitchen oven.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 21, 2026
For cats exploring the kitchen, be mindful of your oven.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026
“It’s in the oven now. Do you want to help me measure it, to make sure it wins?”
From "Zara’s Rules for Record-Breaking Fun" by Hena Khan
Magic Chef stove, one of the first ovens to be equipped with a clock, recast kitchen work as something that could be measured and controlled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
Reconsider your “smart” home: Cameras are becoming more and more common in home appliances, including in smart ovens, refrigerators, doorbells, and toothbrushes—even as people decry surveillance measures in public.
From Slate ● Sep. 15, 2026
"By applying the insecticides, that's when they started falling out of conduit pipes, literally coming out of plug sockets, out of the toasters, out of the back of microwave ovens," he said.
From BBC ● Sep. 9, 2026
At the only public cemetery in Caracas, the two crematory ovens have been working at full capacity.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
“We did solar ovens in science last week.”
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
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