stoke
/stəʊk/US/stoʊk/
stoke verb: to poke, pierce, thrust. Also the misconstruction of stokes.
Verb (1)
stoke (third-person singular simple present stokes, present participle stoking, simple past and past participle stoked)
- To poke, pierce, thrust.
- Ne short swerd for to stoke with point bityng / No man ne drawe ne bere it by his syde / Ne no man shal un to his felawe ryde / But o cours with a sharp ygrounde spere1387–1400, [Geoffrey] Chaucer, “The Knẏghtes Tale”, in The Tales of Caunt́bury (Hengwrt Chaucer; Peniarth Manuscript 392D), Aberystwyth, Ceredigion: National Library of Wales, published [c....
Noun
stoke (plural stokes)
- An act of poking, piercing, thrusting
Verb (2)
stoke (third-person singular simple present stokes, present participle stoking, simple past and past participle stoked)
- To feed, stir up, especially, a fire or furnace.
- To encourage a behavior or emotion.
- Stoking the star maker machinery behind the popular song1974, Joni Mitchell, Free Man in Paris
- To stoke motivation and ambition, focus instead on the road ahead.2011, Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney, Willpower, →ISBN, page 120
- To attend to or supply a furnace with fuel; to act as a stoker or fireman.
Proper noun capitalized: Stoke
Stoke
- Ellipsis of Stoke-on-Trent, a city in Staffordshire, England.
- The main line of the L.N.W.R. passed to the west of the Potteries, and it is recorded that in August, 1846, two trains were run from Whitmore (the nearest station to Stoke) to Liverpool for the benefit of excursionists.1946 November and December, “Notes and News: A North Staffordshire Railway Centenary”, in Railway Magazine, page 389
- A former civil parish in Cheshire East, Cheshire, now merged into Stoke and Hurleston civil parish.
- A village on Hayling Island, Hampshire, England (OS grid ref SU7102).
- A village and civil parish in Medway borough, Kent, England; the parish includes Lower Stoke and Middle Stoke (OS grid ref TQ8275).
- An eastern suburb of Coventry, West Midlands, England (there are a few places in Coventry with other affixes of Stoke) (OS grid ref SP3679).
- A civil parish in Bromsgrove district, Worcestershire, England.
- An outer suburb of Nelson, New Zealand, not far from Richmond, named after Stoke-by-Nayland in England.
Also used as
stoke is also the misconstruction of stokes.
stoke meaning in Nepali
stoke in Nepali
- स्टोक गर्न
Examples of stoke in a sentence
- Stoke City were playing in the second tier of English football before being promoted to the Premier League.
- Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker,” he wrote Tuesday.
- These two new books are designed to stoke the insatiable appetite of ursophiles.
Forms of stoke
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | stokes |
| present participle | stoking |
| past participle | stoked |
| past | stoked |
| Noun | |
| plural | stokes |
Origin of stoke
From Middle English stoken, from Middle Dutch stoken (“to poke, thrust”) or Middle Low German stoken (“to poke, thrust”), from Old Dutch *stokon or Old Saxon *stokon, both from Proto-West Germanic *stokōn, from Proto-Germanic *stukōną (“to be stiff, push”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewg- (“to push, beat”). Cognate with Middle High German stoken (“to pierce, jab”), Norwegian Nynorsk stauka (“to push, thrust”). Alternative etymology derives the Middle English word from Old French estoquer, estochier (“to thrust, strike”), from the same Germanic source. More at stock.
From a back-formation of stoker, apparently from Dutch stoker, from stoken (“to kindle a fire, incite, instigate”), from Middle Dutch stoken (“to poke, thrust”), from stock (“stick, stock”), see: tandenstoker. Ultimately the same word as above.
From Old English stoc (“place”).
Words formed from stoke
- centistoke
- overstoke
- restoke
- stokehold
- stokehole
- stoke up
- unstoked
- Bradley Stoke
- Chew Stoke
- East Stoke
- Harry Stoke
- Itchen Stoke
- Limpley Stoke
- Little Stoke
- Middle Stoke
- Purton Stoke
- Rodney Stoke
- Severn Stoke
- South Stoke
- Stoke Albany
- Stoke and Hurleston
- Stoke Bruerne
- Stoke-by-Clare
- Stoke-by-Nayland
- Stoke Canon
- Stoke Climsland
- Stoke D'Abernon
- Stoke Doyle
- Stoke Edith
- Stoke Ferry
- Stoke Fleming
- Stoke Gabriel
- Stoke Gifford
- Stoke Hammond
- Stoke Holy Cross
- Stoke Lyne
- Stoke Mandeville
- Stoke Newington
- Stoke on Tern
- Stoke-on-Trent
- Stoke Orchard
- Stoke Pero
- Stoke Poges
- Stoke Prior
- Stoke Rochford
- Stoke St Gregory
- Stoke St Mary
- Stoke St Michael
- Stoke sub Hamdon
- Stoke Trister
- Stoke upon Tern
- Stoke Works
- Stokie
- West Stoke
Phrases with stoke
Words that rhyme with stoke
Questions about stoke
- What does stoke mean?
- Stoke means to poke, pierce, thrust.
- What is stoke in Nepali?
- Stoke in Nepali is स्टोक गर्न. See Stoke meaning in Nepali.
- What part of speech is stoke?
- Stoke can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
- How do you pronounce stoke?
- Stoke is pronounced /stəʊk/ (UK).
- What is the past tense of stoke?
- The past tense of stoke is stoked.
Words near stoke in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: stoke (page history and authors); Stoke (page history and authors); stoke (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-stoke.wav.
Cite this entry: “stoke.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/stoke. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.