Other forms: stoves
A stove is the machine you cook on: hot rings on the top, a knob for each one, an oven underneath. A pan of milk going quietly on the back ring while something spits on the front.
In Britain the whole appliance is a cooker and the flat top with the rings is the hob; in America stove covers both, and the top part is the stovetop. A camping stove is the small folding burner you screw a gas canister onto and stand on a flat rock. A wood-burning stove is different again — a closed metal box you light a fire inside to heat a room, with a black pipe going up the wall. Things go ON the stove and IN the oven: soup on the stove, a chicken in the oven. And to slave over a hot stove is to spend hours cooking a meal for other people, which is said with feeling.
1nounstoveA machine for cooking, with heated rings or burners on top and an oven below.~60%
“She left the sauce on the stove too long and burned the bottom of the pan.”
Patternon the stove · a gas / electric / wood-burning stove · stove top · light the stove
synonyms: cooker, range
2nouncampA small portable burner used for cooking outdoors.~5%
“We boiled water on a camping stove outside the tent.”
3nounclosedA closed metal container in which a fire is lit to heat a room.~35%
“He fed another log into the stove and shut the door on it.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 21 sentences found in the wild and placed 20 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
Also accepted in games: cooker, hob
stOVE → the rings on top of the OVEn
Four hot rings on top of the oven, each glowing red under a pot: that is the stove.
hooks ontooven
A stove was a room before it was a machine. English took it from Middle Dutch and Middle Low German stove, from Proto-West Germanic *stubu — a heated room, a bathroom — the same word that gave German Stube, a living room. Some trace it further to Vulgar Latin extūfa, 'to heat with steam', and Greek τῦφος, 'fever'. The heat is the old part; the cooking came later.
Ancient Greek
τῦφος — fever
Latin
ex-
Vulgar Latin
*extūfa
Proto-West Germanic
*stubu — heated room, bathroom, stove
Middle Low German
stove
Middle Dutch
stove
English, today
stove
Built from
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 (“fever”). 2 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”)).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA