oven
Americannoun
noun
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an enclosed heated compartment or receptacle for baking or roasting food
-
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:
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
Take this perfect steak, she says, and no—don’t prepare it in the conventional way, searing in a hot pan and finishing in the oven.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
Turning on the oven quite literally changes the climate of my entire workplace — but roasting summer fruit is one of the few things that makes the sacrifice worthwhile.
From Salon ● Jul. 21, 2026
From the oven comes the mouthwatering smell of turkey.
From "How to Disappear Completely" by Ali Standish
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
Existing battery assembly lines include football-field-long ovens for drying layers of material that have been dissolved in solvents.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 19, 2026
Cooking gas cylinders are a staple in millions of restaurants across India, as authorities have pushed them away from polluting coal or wood-fired ovens.
From Barron's ● Mar. 12, 2026
"We were using 300 kilos of wood a week, now it's about 450-600 kilos," he said, explaining that they had turned off the gas burners that help the ovens retain heat.
From Barron's ● Mar. 12, 2026
One of the dinners that I shared in a mobile home was cooked in an immaculate kitchen, walled in plastic tile, with stainless- steel sinks and ovens and stoves flush with the wall.
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
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.
