stove

UK/stəʊv//stoʊv/

stove noun: a heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room. Also the simple past and past participle of stave.

Image: Dguendel, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

stove (plural stoves)

A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room.
- [I]n the countries of modern Europe, the use of stoves prevail throughout the north; while in France and Great Britain, open fires are used. In the warm countries of Italy and Spain, there are very few chimneys, and the only method usually practised of tempering the cold... is to burn charcoal in...1815 Robertson Buchanan, Appendix to A Treatise on the Economy of Fuel, and Management of Heat, Especially as it Relates to Heating and Drying by Means of Steam. p. 309.
- We toted in the wood and got the fire going nice and comfortable. Lord James still set in one of the chairs and Applegate had cabbaged the other and was hugging the stove.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VIII, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
A device for heating food, (UK) a cooker.
A stovetop, with hotplates.
(UK) A hothouse (heated greenhouse).
- There existed only one specimen of this sacred tree in all Mexico, at least to the knowledge of the Mexicans; […] In spite, however, of the firmest convictions of the indivisibility of this tree — the Manitas, as it is commonly called — it has been propagated by cuttings, some of which are at this...1850, M. A. Burnett, Plantae utiliores: or illustrations of useful plants, employed in the arts and medicine, part 8
- Let but these facts lie contrasted with the treatment they usually receive in the stoves of this country, and the reason why they never grow to any considerable size, attain to any degree of perfection, or flourish to any extent […]1854, The Horticultural Review and Botanical Magazine, volume 4, page 208
(dated) A house or room artificially warmed or heated.
- April 1, 1634, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, letter to the Lord Deputy
  When most of the waiters were commanded away to their supper, the Parlour or Stove being near emptied, in came a Company of Musketeers.
- How tedious is it to them that live in stoves and caves half a year together, as in Iceland, Muscovy, or under the pole!1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC

Verb

stove (third-person singular simple present stoves, present participle stoving, simple past and past participle stoved)

(transitive) To heat or dry, as in a stove.
- to stove feathers
- The wide use of amine-cured epoxy paints is mostly due to their providing many of the properties of stoved epoxy films from an ambient temperature-cured system.1975, William Geoffrey Potter, Uses of Epoxy Resins, page 39
(transitive) To keep warm, in a house or room, by artificial heat.
- to stove orange trees
- orange-trees , lemon-trees , and myrtles , if they be stoved1625, Francis [Bacon], “Of Gardens”, in The Essayes […], 3rd edition, London: […] Iohn Haviland for Hanna Barret, →OCLC
(transitive) To jam; to sprain.
- to stove a finger

Also used as

stove is also the simple past and past participle of stave.

stove meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

stove in Hindi

heater: चूल्हा cūlhā, स्टोव sṭov, तापक tāpak
device for heating food: भट्ठी bhaṭṭhī, तंदूर tandūr, स्टोव sṭov, अँगीठी aṅgīṭhī

stove in Tamil

heater: அடுப்பு aṭuppu
device for heating food: அடுப்பு aṭuppu, சுபாலிகை cupālikai

stove in Urdu

heater: چُولْہا cūlhā, چُولْھا cūlhā
device for heating food: تَنْدُور tandūr, تَنُور tanūr, بَھٹّھی bhaṭṭhī, اَنْگِیٹھی angīṭhī

stove in Bengali

device for heating food: তন্দুর tondur, উনান unan, চুলা cula, আখা akha

More languagesFewer languages

stove in Telugu: పొయ్యి poyyi
stove in Assamese: চৌকা souka
stove in Tagalog: katan, tuluan, kalan, kusinilya
stove in Arabic: مَوْقِد mawqid, مِدْفَأَة midfaʔa, مِدْفَأ midfaʔ
stove in Malay: kompor
stove in Indonesian: kompor, tungku
stove in Thai: เตา dtao, เตาไฟ dtao-fai
stove in Vietnamese: lò, bếp lò, bếp
stove in Myanmar: မီးဖို mi:hpui

Examples of stove in a sentence

The feet of the stove hold it a safe distance above the floor.
I'm going to burn the stove now so the room will start warming up.
It takes a lot longer to boil eggs in a haybox than on a stove.

All 40 example sentences with stove

Forms of stove

Noun
plural	stoves
Verb
third-person singular present	stoves
present participle	stoving
past participle	stoved
past	stoved

Plural of stove: stoves

Origin of stove

From Middle Dutch stove and/or Middle Low German stove (compare Dutch stoof (“foot stove”), German Low German Stuve, Stuuv), both from Proto-West Germanic *stubu (“heated room, bathroom, stove”), further origin uncertain. The Germanic words are very old, and are the source of the Slavic and Romance terms. It is often speculated that the Germanic terms were borrowed from Vulgar Latin *extūfa, *extūfāre (“to heat with steam”), from Latin ex- + *tūfus (“hot vapor”), from Ancient Greek τῦφος (tûphos, “fever”). Cognates Cognate with Old English stofa (“bathroom, bathhouse”), stufbæþ (“hot-air bath”), Old High German stuba (“heated room, bathroom”) (whence German Stube (“living room, room, parlour”), Hungarian szoba (“room”)), Old Norse stofa (whence Danish stue (“living room, room”), Faroese stova (“living room, house”), Icelandic stofa (“living room”), Norwegian Bokmål stue (“cottage, cabin, living room”), Norwegian Nynorsk stove (“cottage, cabin, living room”), Swedish stuga (“cottage, cabin, living room”)). Doublet of stufa.

Phrases with stove

Words that rhyme with stove

41 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about stove

What does stove mean?: Stove means a heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room.
What is stove in Hindi?: Stove in Hindi is चूल्हा (cūlhā), स्टोव (sṭov), तापक (tāpak). See Stove meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is stove?: Stove can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce stove?: Stove is pronounced /stəʊv/ (UK).
What is the plural of stove?: The plural of stove is stoves.

Words near stove in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: stove (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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-stove.ogg.

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