kettle
/ˈkɛ.təl//ˈkɛ.təl/
kettle noun: a vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food, usually metal and equipped with a lid. Also the ellipsis of kettle of fish.
Noun
kettle (plural kettles)
- A vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food, usually metal and equipped with a lid.
- To cook pasta, you first need to put the kettle on.
- There's a hot kettle of soup on the stove.
- The quantity held by a kettle.
- A vessel or appliance used to boil water for the preparation of hot beverages and other foodstuffs.
- Stick the kettle on and we'll have a nice cup of tea.
- Synonyms:
- teakettle
- A kettle hole, sometimes any pothole.
- A group of raptors swirling and spiraling upward as they ride a thermal, especially when migrating.
- a kettle of hawks
- Kettles can consist of thousands of birds migrating together.2010, Jean-Luc E. Cartron, Raptors of New Mexico
- A steam locomotive.
- A kettledrum.
- An instance of kettling; a group of protesters or rioters confined in a limited area.
- A watch (timepiece).
- A bucket for holding a quantity of paint during the painting process.
- A type of encirclement.
- Near-synonym: cauldron
- Synonyms:
- cauldron
Verb
kettle (third-person singular simple present kettles, present participle kettling, simple past and past participle kettled)
- To contain demonstrators in a confined area.
- Life for senior officers has been made much easier by the use of counter-terrorism powers, which enable them to contain demonstrators for hours in a confined spot. This tactic, known as kettling, is seen by some as an attempt to prevent people lawfully demonstrating.2009 April 2, John O'Connor, “G20: The upside of kettling: The Guardian”, in The Guardian
- A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned—or is the term for this ‘kettled’?—by bright orange police mesh.2011 October 12, Gregory Djerejian, “This Ain't No Tea Party: A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street”, in The Atlantic
- Of a boiler: to make a whistling sound like the boiling of a kettle, indicative of various types of fault.
Proper noun capitalized: Kettle
Kettle (countable and uncountable, plural Kettles)
- A surname.
- An unincorporated community in Cumberland County, Kentucky, United States, named after a creek.
- An unincorporated community in Roane County, West Virginia, United States, named after a summit.
- Synonym of Kingskettle, Fife, Scotland.
- Synonyms:
- Kingskettle, Fife, Scotland
Also used as
kettle is also the ellipsis of kettle of fish.
kettle is also the alternative form of kiddle.
kettle meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
kettle in Hindi
- vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food
- केतली ketlī
kettle in Tamil
- vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food
- கெண்டி keṇṭi
kettle in Marathi
- vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food
- किटली kiṭlī
kettle in Urdu
- vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food
- کیتْلی ketlī
More languagesFewer languages
- kettle in Bengali
- কেটলি keṭli
- kettle in Telugu
- కేటిల్ kēṭil
- kettle in Kannada
- ಕೆಟಲ್ keṭal
- kettle in Gujarati
- કીટલી kīṭlī
- kettle in Sinhala
- කේතලය kētalaya
- kettle in Tagalog
- takuri, kawa
- kettle in Arabic
- غَلَّايَة ḡallāya
- kettle in Malay
- ketel
- kettle in Indonesian
- ketel
- kettle in Thai
- กา gaa
- kettle in Vietnamese
- ấm, bình đun siêu tốc
- kettle in Myanmar
- ရေနွေးအိုး re-nwe:ui:
- Kashmiri
- کِتٕلؠ kitụl'
Examples of kettle in a sentence
- the "River of Raptors" - an enormous kettle of hawks - circles over Cardel, in Veracruz, Mexico, in early October2012, Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Clay Sutton, Hawks in Flight, HarperCollins:
- then a pure Swainsons's hawk kettle of about 50 birds1996, Clay Sutton, Patricia Sutton, How to Spot Hawks and Eagles, Houghton Mifflin, page 30:
- Groups of hawks all spiraling on the same thermal are called kettles.2012, Laur Erickson, Betsy Bowen, Hawk Ridge, University of Minnesota Press, page 3:
Synonyms of kettle
- teakettle
- cauldron
- pickle
- ass in a sling
- bind
- bucket of syrup
- calvary
- cross
- cross to bear
- difficulty
23 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of kettle
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | kettles |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | kettles |
| present participle | kettling |
| past participle | kettled |
| past | kettled |
| Proper noun | |
| plural | Kettles |
| alternative form | Kettell |
Origin of kettle
From Middle English ketel, also chetel, from Old English ċietel (“kettle, cauldron”) and in Middle English possibly influenced by Old Norse ketill and both from Proto-Germanic *katilaz (“kettle, bucket, vessel”), of uncertain origin and formation. Usually regarded as a borrowing of Late Latin catīllus (“small bowl”), diminutive of Latin catinus (“deep bowl, vessel for cooking up or serving food”), however, the word may be Germanic confused with the Latin: compare Old English cete (“cooking pot”), Old High German chezzi (“a kettle, dish, bowl”), Icelandic kati, ketla (“a small boat”). Cognate with West Frisian tsjettel (“kettle”), Dutch ketel (“kettle”), German Kessel (“kettle”), Swedish kittel (“cauldron, kettle”), Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐍄𐌹𐌻𐍃 (katils, “kettle”), Finnish kattila, Polish kocioł (“cauldron”), Czech kotel (“boiler”), Russian котёл (kotjól, “boiler, cauldron”). (watch): Cockney rhyming slang from 'kettle and hob' to 'fob' (fob watch).
The Scottish place-name was historically Cattell (1160). Probably from Scottish Gaelic cat (“cat”) or Pictish cat (“cat”) with a locational suffix.
Words formed from kettle
- a watched kettle never boils
- cat calling the kettle black
- cheese kettle
- coffee-kettle
- fish kettle
- giant kettle
- giant's kettle
- Kelly Kettle
- kettlebell
- kettlebelly
- kettle bottom
- kettle cable
- kettle chip
- kettle corn
- kettle drum
- kettle-drum
- kettleful
- kettle fur collector
- kettle hat
- kettle helmet
- kettle hole
- kettle lake
- kettle lead
- kettlelike
- kettle logic
- kettle of fish
- kettle-pin
- kettler
- kettle stitch
- kettle trap
- lunch kettle
- potash kettle
- pot calling the kettle black
- storm in a tea-kettle
- tea-kettle
- teakettle
- tea kettle
- tempest in a tea-kettle
Phrases with kettle
- Two Kettle
- kettle hats
- kettle chips
- kettle drums
- kettle holes
- kettle lakes
- kettle leads
- kettle traps
- kettle cables
- kettle bottoms
- kettle helmets
- kettle stitches
4 more phrasesFewer phrases
Words that rhyme with kettle
Questions about kettle
- What does kettle mean?
- Kettle means a vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food, usually metal and equipped with a lid.
- What is kettle in Hindi?
- Kettle in Hindi is केतली (ketlī). See Kettle meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use kettle in a sentence?
- the "River of Raptors" - an enormous kettle of hawks - circles over Cardel, in Veracruz, Mexico, in early October
- What part of speech is kettle?
- Kettle can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce kettle?
- Kettle is pronounced /ˈkɛ.təl/.
- What is the plural of kettle?
- The plural of kettle is kettles.
Words near kettle in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kettle (page history and authors); Kettle (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-gb-kettle.oga, en-us-kettle.ogg.
Cite this entry: “kettle.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/kettle. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.