stove

stove ¹

noun

1. An apparatus in which electricity or a fuel is used to furnish heat, as for cooking or warmth.
2. A device that produces heat for specialized, especially industrial, purposes.
3. A kiln.
4. Chiefly British A hothouse.

Origin: Middle English, heated room, probably from Middle Low German or Middle Dutch, both probably from Vulgar Latin *extūfa, 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.