preheat

UK/pɹiːˈhiːt/US/pɹiːˈhiːt/

verbB1+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #14,243 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: preheated, preheating, preheats

To preheat is to warm an oven before the food goes in. Preheat the oven, preheat to two hundred, a preheated tray.

It matters because most recipes assume a hot oven from the first minute — pastry that goes in before you preheat melts before it sets, and bread needs the initial blast to rise. Most ovens preheat well before the indicator light goes out.

Definitions of preheat

1verbpreheatTo warm an oven before the food goes in.B1+
“Preheat the oven to 200 degrees before you put the cake in.”
- Said"Preheat the oven now, so it's ready when I've finished the dough."
- WrittenHe preheated the oven, forgot about it, and came back an hour later to a very warm kitchen.
- UsedPreheat to 180 degrees before the tray goes in.
- ContrastPreheat, not heat. Heat is warming anything; preheat is warming the empty oven before the food arrives. heat →
- Not thisTurning the oven on with the cake already inside is not preheating.
- SimplyPreheat the oven. Then put the bread in.
Patternpreheat the oven to + temperature · a preheated oven · preheat for + time

preheat is a warming.

Remember it

PRE-HEAT → HEAT it before

It is pre + heat: heat the oven before the cake goes in.

hooks ontoheat

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*keHy- — heat; hot
Proto-Germanic
*haitį̄ — heat
Proto-West Germanic
*haitī
Old English
hǣtu
Middle English
hete
English
heat
English, today
preheat

From pre- + heat. heat comes from Middle English hete, from Old English hǣtu, from Proto-West Germanic haitī, from Proto-Germanic haitį̄ (“heat”), from Proto-Indo-European keHy- (“heat; hot”). Cognate with Scots hete (“heat”), stq Hatte (“heat”), Old High German heizī (“heat”). Related also to Dutch hitte (“heat”), German Hitze (“heat”), Swedish hetta (“heat”), Faroese and Icelandic hiti (“heat”). Related to hot.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen

Practise this word

preheat in the wild

Generally, they extract heat from the exhaust and use it to preheat air entering the combustion system, reducing the need for fuel and boosting the system's energy efficiency.
Recuperator
Additionally, between stages this steam uses some heat to preheat incoming saline water.
Multiple-effect distillation
The purpose of the Kirchweger condenser (German: Kirchweger-Kondensationseinrichtung or Kirchwegersche Abdampfkondensation) was to preheat feedwater in a steam locomotive using the exhaust steam from the engine.
Kirchweger condenser

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.

Related words

Definitions of preheat

1verbpreheatTo warm an oven before the food goes in.B1+

“Preheat the oven to 200 degrees before you put the cake in.”

Said"Preheat the oven now, so it's ready when I've finished the dough."
WrittenHe preheated the oven, forgot about it, and came back an hour later to a very warm kitchen.
UsedPreheat to 180 degrees before the tray goes in.
ContrastPreheat, not heat. Heat is warming anything; preheat is warming the empty oven before the food arrives. heat →
Not thisTurning the oven on with the cake already inside is not preheating.
SimplyPreheat the oven. Then put the bread in.

Patternpreheat the oven to + temperature · a preheated oven · preheat for + time

preheat is a warming.