stove
1 Americannoun
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stoves
plural
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a portable or fixed apparatus that furnishes heat for warmth, cooking, etc., commonly using coal, oil, gas, wood, or electricity as a source of power.
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a heated chamber or box for some special purpose, as a drying room or a kiln for firing pottery.
verb (used with object)
verb
noun
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another word for cooker
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any heating apparatus, such as a kiln
verb
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to process (ceramics, metalwork, etc) by heating in a stove
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to stew (meat, vegetables, etc)
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of stove
1425–75; (noun) late Middle English: sweat bath, heated room, probably < Middle Dutch, Middle Low German, cognate with Old English stofa, stofu heated room for bathing, Old High German stuba ( German Stube room; cf. bierstube), Old Norse stofa; early Germanic borrowing < Vulgar Latin *extupa, *extūpa (> French étuve sweat room of a bath; cf. stew 1), noun derivative of *extūpāre, *extūfāre to fill with vapor, equivalent to Latin ex- ex- 1 + Vulgar Latin *-tūfāre < Greek tȳ́phein to raise smoke, smoke, akin to tŷphos fever ( see typhus); alternatively explained as a native Germanic base, borrowed into Romance ( cf. izba); (v.) late Middle English stoven to subject to hot-air bath, derivative of the noun
Explanation
A stove is a machine that heats or cooks. If you want really delicious popcorn, don't use the microwave — cook it the old-fashioned way, in a pot of hot oil on the stove. Stoves typically use gas or electricity. If you have a wood-burning stove in your house, you know it's an apparatus that burns split logs to create enough heat to warm up a room — or several rooms. In the 15th century, stove meant either "heated room" or "bathroom." Experts aren't sure about the word's origin, although some guess a connection to Vulgar Latin's extufare, "take a steam bath."
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:
Historians from Albany or Troy, N.Y., may object to the supposition that Philadelphia was the national headquarters of the early cast-iron stove industry.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2026
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
I actually like to step away from the stove at this point.
From Salon ● Oct. 5, 2026
On 17 July, part of the Rustic Stomp festival near Wareham, Dorset, was destroyed by a fire that started when a camping stove set fire to a tent.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
He poured everything into the pot and turned on the stove.
From "Legendary Frybread Drive-In" by Cynthia Leitich Smith
They include steel, aluminum, clothing, smartphones and other electronics, fish, dishwashers, washing machines, and stoves.
From Slate ● Aug. 25, 2026
Camp Bestival's announcement means purpose-built barbecues and camping stoves can only be used in the designated cooking areas within the campsites.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
It's a mammoth task: The vast majority of the city's 20,500 licensed food carts -- selling pretzels, peanuts and ice cream -- rely on generators to power stoves, freezers and ventilators.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
But he said concerns usually fall away when they learn more about induction stoves.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 18, 2026
She waves in the general direction of the stoves.
From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan
No one ever ovened a cake or stoved an egg, but Americans are microwaving with impunity.
From Time Magazine Archive
The cotton is worked in this liquor, which is kept at 100° F., until it is thoroughly impregnated, then it is taken out, squeezed and dried, or in some cases piled overnight and then stoved.
From The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student by Franklin Beech
An inferior silk called "Koukoularika" is made from the cocoons of the ordinary or univoltine race, both those which have been stoved and those which have been badly stained when the moths emerged.
From Notes on Agriculture in Cyprus and Its Products by William Bevan
The pipe rack was originally a wrought-iron frame upon which dirty clay pipes were stoved in a brick oven and restored to their original freshness.
From Chats on Household Curios by Fred. W. (Frederick William) Burgess
It is possible to enter only in calm weather, or the boat would be stoved in against the rocky archway.
From From Pole to Pole A Book for Young People by Sven Anders Hedin
Black hold, the detonations fierce, floor puddled with wet sick; heaving; victory blotched by fog and rain, the wind meddling, ships luffing, stoving up as if careened; and I below.
From "The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves" by M.T. Anderson
If it is used to protect tin-plate printing, when the plates after stoving have been subsequently rolled so as to distort the letters, the varnish has in no way suffered, and its surface remains unbroken.
From Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and Galvanizing by William N. Brown
The gradations of quality may be partly due to the action of heat, i.e. stoving at a higher or lower temperature.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 6 "Celtes, Konrad" to "Ceramics" by Various
After a second baking or perhaps stoving had taken place, the designs were further enriched by the application of opaque purple and white pigments, which follow certain conventional principles in their respective use.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 6 "Celtes, Konrad" to "Ceramics" by Various
The clothes she had worn disappeared mysteriously for some days, and were then returned from the stoving department of the Glenbury Sanitation Office.
From A harum-scarum schoolgirl by John Campbell
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