Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

worktop

nounB2Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speech — work sits at #54neutral

Other forms: worktops

A worktop is the flat surface you prepare food on. Kitchen units below, cupboards above, and never enough of it.

It is the British word, and American English says countertop. Material is most of the decision, since laminate is cheap, wood needs oiling, granite is heavy and quartz is what everybody currently wants. A worktop takes an extraordinary amount of abuse from heat, knives and water. The word is one word and is used almost entirely of kitchens.

David Monniaux · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of worktop

  1. 1nounworktopA flat surface in a kitchen used for preparing food.B2

    “Wipe down the worktop before you start.”

    • Said"Clear the worktop, would you? I need room to roll out."
    • WrittenThe worktops were granite and cold, and the pastry loved them.
    • UsedWipe the worktop with hot soapy water after handling raw chicken.
    • ContrastA worktop, not a table. You eat at a table; you chop, knead and spill on a worktop. table →
    • Not thisA shelf is not a worktop. A worktop is waist high and made to work on.
    • SimplyThe bread is on the worktop. Cut it there.

    Patternon the worktop · a kitchen worktop · granite / wooden worktop · counter (American)

Also accepted in games: countertop

Remember it

WORK-TOP → the TOP you WORK on

The top you work on: the flat surface by the sink where the chopping happens.

hooks ontoworktop

Where it comes from

From work + top.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in In the Kitchen, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 2 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

worktop in the wild

  • The starter 'breathes' when covered loosely with a tea-towel and left out on the worktop and stirred occasionally.

    Herman cake

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.