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:
A wood-burning cast-iron stove serves as both fireplace and heater in the center of the living space.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 6, 2026
During this year’s “crafting season,” he bought a 12-foot motorboat for $1,000 and transformed it by adding his own roof and a working wood stove.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
The day was in the low 70s, and a breeze was coming through our kitchen window; I decided I would not mind standing at the stove long enough to coax the squash toward sweet collapse.
From Salon ● Aug. 4, 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
We’d had the stove going for two weeks now, so it was high time to clean out the stovepipe.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
They include steel, aluminum, clothing, smartphones and other electronics, fish, dishwashers, washing machines, and stoves.
From Slate ● Aug. 25, 2026
When the cameras start rolling on Celebrity MasterChef, the contestants may be the ones sweating over the stoves, but there is plenty going on behind the scenes.
From BBC ● Aug. 17, 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
Camping gear used for cooking is packed up, with electric stoves back in action.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
Refrigerators were sailing along the avenues, as were stoves and dishwashers.
From "Middlesex: A Novel" by Jeffrey Eugenides
No one ever ovened a cake or stoved an egg, but Americans are microwaving with impunity.
From Time Magazine Archive
The stoved planks were found to be in a good state of preservation, while many of the others were rotten.
From Ancient and Modern Ships. Part 1. Wooden Sailing Ships by George C. V. Holmes
He walked with a limp, stiff and stoved in his joints as a foundered horse.
From Trail's End by George W. (George Washington) Ogden
These two are used for the red lacquer, but vermilion should be stoved at a low temperature.
From Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and Galvanizing by William N. Brown
If they had not, being so short-handed for the size of the boat, they would have been stoved; as it was they were nearly wrecked by a balk of timber from the explosion.
From The Beach of Dreams by H. De Vere (Henry De Vere) Stacpoole
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
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 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
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
In this year, however, the process of stoving was introduced.
From Ancient and Modern Ships. Part 1. Wooden Sailing Ships by George C. V. Holmes
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