steam

UK/stiːm/US/stiːm/

nounA24 meanings Very common — you will meet it every day · #2,016 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: steamed, steaming

Steam is the hot cloud that rises off boiling water. The plume from the kettle spout, the fog on the bathroom mirror, the burst that hits your wrist when you lift a pan lid too fast.

As a verb, steam is a way of cooking: you steam broccoli in a basket above the water and never in it, which is why it keeps its colour. Steam also carries things along — trains ran on steam, ships steamed across the Atlantic, and your breath steams up a cold window. Then there is the figurative crowd: you let off steam when you shout at nobody in particular, you run out of steam halfway through a job, and you arrive under your own steam when nobody gave you a lift. One point for the physics lesson — real steam is invisible, and the white cloud you can see is already water droplets, formed as the steam cools.

Definitions of steam

1nounsteamThe hot cloud of water vapour that rises from boiling water.A2~2%
“Steam curled off the mug and misted the window beside it.”
synonyms: vapour
2nounpressureThat vapour under pressure, used to drive engines and machines.B1~94%
“The mill ran on steam until the war.”
3verbcookTo cook food in the hot vapour above boiling water.B1~2%
“Steam the fish for eight minutes and serve it with lemon.”
- Said"Steam the broccoli, don't drown it; it keeps its colour that way."
- WrittenThe dumplings steamed in their bamboo basket while the rain steamed off the street outside.
- UsedSteam the fish for eight minutes over a simmering pan.
- ContrastSteam, not boil. Boiled food sits in the water; steamed food sits above it, in the hot cloud. boil →
- Not thisWarming a plate over a pot is not steaming. Steaming cooks, from raw to done.
- SimplySteam the vegetables. They stay green.
Patternsteam + noun (rice, fish, vegetables) · steam for + time · steamed + noun · a steamer
4verbgiveTo give off steam, or to travel somewhere driven by steam.B1~2%
“The bowl of soup steamed on the table between them.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: vapor, vapour

Remember it

STEAM → the white cloud does the cooking

Hold the fish over boiling water and let the hot white cloud coming off it do the cooking.

Phrases it lives in

let off steam — release anger or energy in a harmless way
run out of steam — lose energy before finishing something
under your own steam — without help, and with some credit for managing it
full steam ahead — with all possible energy and speed

Also practised as

verbTo cook food in the hot cloud above boiling water, never in the water itself.

Where it comes from

Steam is old and barely changed. Old English stēam meant steam, but also hot breath and hot exhalation — the word covered anything that came off a warm body as mist, and it stretched as far as blood. Behind it sits Proto-Germanic *staumaz and a Proto-Indo-European root *dʰewh₂-, 'to whirl, waft, smoke', the same restless idea that surfaced in Latin as fūmus, smoke.

Proto-Indo-European
*dʰewh₂- — to whirl, waft, stink, shake; steam, haze, smoke
Proto-Germanic
*staumaz — steam, vapour, breath
Old English
stēam — steam, hot exhalation, hot breath; that which emits vapour; blood
Middle English
steem
English, today
steam

From Middle English steem, stem, from Old English stēam (“steam, hot exhalation, hot breath; that which emits vapour; blood”), from Proto-Germanic staumaz (“steam, vapour, breath”), from Proto-Indo-European dʰewh₂- (“to whirl, waft, stink, shake; steam, haze, smoke”). Cognate with Scots stem, steam (“steam”), West Frisian steam (“steam, vapour”), Dutch stoom (“steam, vapour”), Low German stom (“steam”), Swedish - dialectal stimma (“steam, fog”), Latin fūmus (“smoke, steam”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Science & Space

Practise this word

steam in the wild

A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.
Steam engine
Thomas Savery is considered the inventor of the first commercially used steam powered device, a steam pump that used steam pressure operating directly on the water.
Steam engine
About 42% of all electricity generation in the United States in 2022 was by the use of steam turbines.
Steam turbine
The term steamboat is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels working on lakes, rivers, and in short-sea shipping.
Steamboat
Functionally, it is a self-propelled steam engine on wheels.
Steam locomotive

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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

the stēam family

steam steaming

steam — used about once every 247 pages · #2,016 · point at the bar for the others

Definitions of steam

1nounsteamThe hot cloud of water vapour that rises from boiling water.A2~2%

“Steam curled off the mug and misted the window beside it.”

synonyms: vapour

2nounpressureThat vapour under pressure, used to drive engines and machines.B1~94%

“The mill ran on steam until the war.”

3verbcookTo cook food in the hot vapour above boiling water.B1~2%

“Steam the fish for eight minutes and serve it with lemon.”

Said"Steam the broccoli, don't drown it; it keeps its colour that way."
WrittenThe dumplings steamed in their bamboo basket while the rain steamed off the street outside.
UsedSteam the fish for eight minutes over a simmering pan.
ContrastSteam, not boil. Boiled food sits in the water; steamed food sits above it, in the hot cloud. boil →
Not thisWarming a plate over a pot is not steaming. Steaming cooks, from raw to done.
SimplySteam the vegetables. They stay green.

Patternsteam + noun (rice, fish, vegetables) · steam for + time · steamed + noun · a steamer

4verbgiveTo give off steam, or to travel somewhere driven by steam.B1~2%

“The bowl of soup steamed on the table between them.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Also accepted in games: vapor, vapour