Word.ws English Dictionary

hypocaust

hypocaust noun: an underfloor space or flue through which heat from a furnace passes to heat the floor of a room or a bath.

hypocaust: an underfloor space or flue through which heat from a furnace passes to heat the floor of a room or...
Image: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hypocaust (plural hypocausts)

  1. An underfloor space or flue through which heat from a furnace passes to heat the floor of a room or a bath.
  2. An underfloor heating system, even without such an underfloor space or flue, as adapted for modern housing.

Synonyms of hypocaust

Forms of hypocaust

pluralhypocausts

Origin of hypocaust

From Latin hypocaustum, from Ancient Greek ὑπόκαυστον (hupókauston), from Ancient Greek ὑπό (hupó, “underneath”) + καυστόν (kaustón, “burnt offering”).

Questions about hypocaust

What does hypocaust mean?
Hypocaust means an underfloor space or flue through which heat from a furnace passes to heat the floor of a room or a bath.
What part of speech is hypocaust?
Hypocaust is a noun.
What is the plural of hypocaust?
The plural of hypocaust is hypocausts.

Words near hypocaust in the dictionary

  1. hypocarpogean
  2. hypocarps
  3. hypocatastases
  4. hypocatastasis
  5. hypocatastatic
  6. hypocaust
  7. hypocausts
  8. hypocellular
  9. hypocellularity
  10. hypocenter
  11. hypocenters

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hypocaust (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “hypocaust.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hypocaust. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.