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:
But the purchase of a new oven landed her in hot water.
From Barron's ● Aug. 18, 2026
Prepare the pan: Heat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9-inch round cake pan and line the bottom with parchment.
From Salon ● Aug. 16, 2026
The fan acts as a convection oven, an appliance that circulates hot air in order to cook food quickly and evenly.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
"I haven't checked whether the machines such as the oven are working," she said.
From BBC ● Jul. 29, 2026
Babulya was knitting a lumpy scarf near the oven, and Dyedka was grumping his way through Papa’s old history book at the table, thumping his wooden legs impatiently on the floor.
From Anya and the Nightingale by Sofiya Pasternack
Their roller kilns - which transport materials through every production phase inside industrial ovens - are powered by electric motors.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
Working in food, my office is quite literally the kitchen: I write at a repurposed steel prep table, with my laptop on top and Dutch ovens stored below, that sits directly beside the stove.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2026
At the only public cemetery in Caracas, the two crematory ovens have been working at full capacity.
From Barron's ● Jul. 1, 2026
Across the region, the latest heat wave turned un-air-conditioned hospitals and nursing homes into ovens.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 1, 2026
They showed things like coffee pots, microwave ovens, and kitchen sinks.
From "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" by John Bul Dau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
