boil

UK/bɔɪ(ə)l/US/bɔɪ(ə)l/

verbA2+3 meanings Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,350 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: boiling, boiled, boils

Boil is what water does when it gets hot enough to bubble and turn to steam. You boil the kettle for tea, drop pasta into a pan of boiling water, boil an egg for four minutes.

The word works both ways round: the water boils, and you boil the water. Bring something to the boil and it reaches that bubbling point; boil it down and you cook the liquid away until only the thick part is left, which is where 'it all boils down to money' comes from. Boil over is a pan spilling onto the stove, and also an argument that finally spills into shouting. A boil is a red, painful lump under the skin too — same spelling, nothing to do with cooking. And hot is not boiling: water steams long before the bubbles arrive.

Definitions of boil

1verbverbOf a liquid: to reach the heat at which it bubbles and turns to steam; to heat a liquid to that point.A2+~67%
“Wait for the water to boil before you add the rice.”
synonyms: simmer, seethe
2verbboilTo cook food in bubbling hot water.A2+~25%
“He boiled two eggs and ate them standing at the counter.”
- Said"Boil the potatoes for me, would you? I'm running late."
- WrittenShe boiled the eggs for exactly six minutes and timed them by the church clock.
- UsedBoil the pasta, uncovered, in plenty of salted water until just tender.
- ContrastBoil, not just cook. Cook is any heat at all; boil is a rolling bubble. cook →
- Not thisYou do not boil a steak or a slice of bread. Boiling is for what goes into liquid.
- Exchange"How long do I boil them?""Ten, then straight under the cold tap."
Patternboil + noun (eggs, potatoes, rice) · boil for + time · bring to the boil · hard-boiled / soft-boiled · boiling water
3nounredA red, painful swelling under the skin, filled with pus.B2~8%
“She had a boil on the back of her neck for a week.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Remember it

Boil → b for the bubbles rising

Watch the pot: small bubbles, then big ones, then the whole top jumping. The water is boiling, and so are the eggs inside it.

Phrases it lives in

boil down to something — to have that as its real point, once everything else is stripped away
boil over — to break out into open anger
make someone's blood boil — to make someone furious

Also practised as

verbTo heat water until it bubbles and steams.

Where it comes from

There are two boils, and the older recorded line belongs to the lump rather than the pot: Middle English bule, a boil or tumour, from Old English bȳle, a swelling, from Proto-Germanic *būlijō. The relatives are still visible — Dutch buil, German Beule for a bump or swelling, Icelandic beyla. The expected English spelling was bile; the rounded oi came in later, pulled that way by the b- and by the cooking word standing next to it.

Proto-Germanic
*būlijō
Old English
bȳl
Middle English
bile
English, today
boil

Built from

bule · Middle English — boil, tumor
bȳle · Old English — boil, swelling
*būlō · Proto-Germanic — boil

From Middle English bile, bule (“boil, tumor”), from Old English bȳl, bȳle (“boil, swelling”), from Proto-Germanic būlijō, būlō (“boil”). Akin to Dutch buil (“boil, swelling”), German Beule (“boil, hump”), Icelandic beyla (“swelling, hump”). The expected form is bile; the rounding of the diphthong could be caused by the initial b- and/or by association with etymology 2.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

boil in the wild

While simmering, a liquid will show little movement without approaching a rolling boil.
Simmering
While not as common as other methods of execution, boiling to death has been practiced in many parts of Europe and Asia.
Death by boiling
At altitudes above 2,000 metres, boiling should be extended to 3 minutes, as the lower boiling point at high altitudes requires more time to kill such organisms.
Boil-water advisory
A crab boil is a social event where boiled crabs are eaten, a kind of seafood boil.
Crab boil
Sand or mud boils occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand or dirt.
Sand boil

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

boil down to

Definitions of boil

1verbverbOf a liquid: to reach the heat at which it bubbles and turns to steam; to heat a liquid to that point.A2+~67%

“Wait for the water to boil before you add the rice.”

synonyms: simmer, seethe

2verbboilTo cook food in bubbling hot water.A2+~25%

“He boiled two eggs and ate them standing at the counter.”

Said"Boil the potatoes for me, would you? I'm running late."
WrittenShe boiled the eggs for exactly six minutes and timed them by the church clock.
UsedBoil the pasta, uncovered, in plenty of salted water until just tender.
ContrastBoil, not just cook. Cook is any heat at all; boil is a rolling bubble. cook →
Not thisYou do not boil a steak or a slice of bread. Boiling is for what goes into liquid.
Exchange"How long do I boil them?""Ten, then straight under the cold tap."

Patternboil + noun (eggs, potatoes, rice) · boil for + time · bring to the boil · hard-boiled / soft-boiled · boiling water

3nounredA red, painful swelling under the skin, filled with pus.B2~8%

“She had a boil on the back of her neck for a week.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 13 sentences found in the wild and placed 12 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.