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:
He and his roommates would use up to six stove burners at a time to prepare meals together, he said.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 9, 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
In the early 1970s, Stephen Hawking and other researchers discovered surprising connections between the laws of thermodynamics, which describe familiar processes such as heating water on a stove, and the behavior of black holes.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 13, 2026
Beans weren’t just beans; they were something that needed to bubble away on the stove for hours.
From Salon ● Jun. 16, 2026
When he was finished growling he snorted twice, stood, turned away from the stove, and started to pull.
From "Woodsong" by Gary Paulsen
They reside primarily under the care of head prop master Andrew Crawford, who is currently making sure the small butane tanks — not unlike those used in camping stoves — have enough fuel.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 19, 2026
A music festival has banned revellers using camping stoves at their tents and disposable barbecues anywhere on site due to the hot weather and "dry ground conditions" expected this weekend.
From BBC ● Jul. 30, 2026
Tenants “deserve to live in dignity with basic necessities like working stoves and ovens.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 23, 2026
The Maldives and Nepal are rationing the supply of liquefied petroleum gas—popular for cooking—urging households to switch to electric stoves.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 20, 2026
There were caves everywhere running into the cloud, and at the entrances to the caves the Cloud-Men’s wives were crouching over little stoves with frying-pans in their hands, frying snowballs for their husbands’ suppers.
From "James and the Giant Peach" by Roald Dahl
No one ever ovened a cake or stoved an egg, but Americans are microwaving with impunity.
From Time Magazine Archive
"I regret the what-do-you-call-it?—the stoved howtowdy," said he, laughing, "more for the sound of it than for any sense its name conveys to me."
From Doom Castle by Neil Munro
Vermilion must be stoved at a very gentle heat.
From Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and Galvanizing by William N. Brown
A carbonate of soda liquor of 2° Tw. strength is prepared, and the cotton steeped in this until it is thoroughly impregnated, then it is wrung out and stoved.
From The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student by Franklin Beech
Of six boats not one was saved, all being stoved, and washed overboard with the booms, &c.
From Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 by William O. S. Gilly
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
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
Not a solitary germ, however, had survived the stoving and whitewashing, and the health record at the Dower House maintained its former standard of excellence.
From The School by the Sea by Angela Brazil
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
The operator should procure his enamels a shade or two lighter than he desires to see in the finished article, allowing the chemical action due to the stoving to tone the colours down.
From Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and Galvanizing by William N. Brown
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.
