| / English Dictionary |
FURNACE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
An enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("furnace" is a kind of...):
chamber (a natural or artificial enclosed space)
Meronyms (parts of "furnace"):
grate; grating (a frame of iron bars to hold a fire)
register (a regulator (as a sliding plate) for regulating the flow of air into a furnace or other heating device)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "furnace"):
athanor (a furnace that feeds itself so as to maintain a uniform temperature; used by alchemists)
blast furnace (a furnace for smelting of iron from iron oxide ores; combustion is intensified by a blast of air)
cremation chamber; crematorium; crematory (a furnace where a corpse can be burned and reduced to ashes)
cupola (a vertical cylindrical furnace for melting iron for casting)
electric furnace (any furnace in which the heat is provided by an electric current)
firebox (a furnace (as on a steam locomotive) in which fuel is burned)
forge (furnace consisting of a special hearth where metal is heated before shaping)
gas furnace (a furnace that burns gas)
incinerator (a furnace for incinerating (especially to dispose of refuse))
kiln (a furnace for firing or burning or drying such things as porcelain or bricks)
oil burner; oil furnace (a furnace that burns oil)
open-hearth furnace (a furnace for making steel in which the steel is placed on a shallow hearth and flames of burning gas and hot air play over it)
reverberatory furnace (a furnace in which the material that is being treated is heated indirectly by flames that are directed at the roof and walls of the furnace)
tank furnace (furnace into one end of which a batch of measured raw materials is shoveled and from the other end molten glass is obtained)
Context examples:
See to the skin tint: it is not to be replaced, for paint as you will, it is not once in a hundred times that it is not either burned too brown in the furnace or else the color will not hold, and you get but a sickly white.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
This cave was made with a clothes horse for a roof, bureaus for walls, and in it was a small furnace in full blast, with a black pot on it and an old witch bending over it.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
He seemed to devour me with his flaming glance: physically, I felt, at the moment, powerless as stubble exposed to the draught and glow of a furnace: mentally, I still possessed my soul, and with it the certainty of ultimate safety.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
I am writing this in the light from the furnace door of the steam launch: Lord Godalming is firing up.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Further, I say, that, if you will stay with me, I will teach you all the secrets of the glass-stainers' mystery: the pigments and their thickening, which will fuse into the glass and which will not, the furnace and the glazing—every trick and method you shall know.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Pent in, a hundred feet from earth, with a furnace raging under them and a ravening multitude all round who thirsted for their blood, it seemed indeed as though no men had ever come through such peril with their lives.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
The clang of blows, the cries of the stricken, the short, deep shout of the islanders, and the fierce whoops of the rovers, rose together in a deafening tumult, while the breath of the panting men went up in the wintry air like the smoke from a furnace.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
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