hearth

Noun

hearth (plural hearths)

1. The place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos, fireplace, oven, smoke hood, or chimney.
   • For by the hearth the children sit
     ⁠Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
     ⁠And scarce endure to draw the breath,
     Or like to noiseless phantoms flit: […]1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XX”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 33
2. A hearthstone, either as standalone or as the floor of an enclosed fireplace or oven.
   • cooking on an open hearth
   • When the flames at last began to flicker and subside, his lids fluttered, then drooped ; but he had lost all reckoning of time when he opened them again to find Miss Erroll in furs kneeling on the hearth and heaping kindling on the coals, and her pretty little Alsatian maid beside her, laying a log...1907 August, Robert W[illiam] Chambers, chapter III, in The Younger Set, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC
3. A fireplace: an open recess in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire may be built.
4. The lowest part of a metallurgical furnace.
5. A brazier, chafing dish, or firebox.
6. (figuratively) Home or family life.
   • To put it simply, he seems to me to be starting out to harm the city, from its very hearth, by setting out to wrong you.2010, Plato, “Euthyphro”, in Christopher Rowe, transl., The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Books Ltd., →ISBN, line 3a
7. (Germanic) A household or group in some forms of the modern pagan faith Heathenry.
   • Asatru is practised all over Northern Europe and also in North America. Like Druidry, it is organized into bodies with sub-groups, the hearths.1996, Vivianne Crowley, Thorsons principles of paganism, page 50
   • Smaller localized groups known as 'hearths' meet regularly, and are comparable, in size and function, with a Wiccan 'Coven' or Druidic 'Grove'.2003 December 8, Robert J. Wallis, Shamans/neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, Alternative Archaeologies, and Contemporary Pagans, page 102