The definition of a stove is a device that uses wood, electricity or gas for heating a room, or for cooking.
(noun)An example of a stove is something with a flame used for cooking inside a house.
See stove in Webster's New World College Dictionary
noun
Origin: ME < MDu, heated room, akin to Ger stube, sitting room, OE stofa, hot air bath < early borrowing < VL *extufa, back-form. < *extufare, to steam, stew
transitive verb, intransitive verb
See stove in American Heritage Dictionary 4
noun
Origin:
Origin: Middle English, heated room
Origin: , probably from Middle Low German
Origin: or Middle Dutch
Origin: , both probably from Vulgar Latin *extūfa
Origin: , from *extūfāre, to heat with steam; see stew
. Word History: The word stove first referred not to a cooking or heating device but to a room for taking a hot-air or steam bath (first recorded in 1456). Around 1545 the word is recorded with reference to another room, such as a bedroom, heated with a furnace. The devices used to heat these rooms came to be called stoves as well, a use first found sometime between 1550 and 1625. Of course, heating devices that we would call stoves had long been in existence, going back to Roman times. However, the stove as the chief cooking device, taking the place of the fireplace, dates only to around the mid-19th century with the widespread use of wood-burning or coal-burning cooking stoves.Learn more about stove