| / English Dictionary |
KETTLE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
A metal pot for stewing or boiling; usually has a lid
Synonyms:
boiler; kettle
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("kettle" is a kind of...):
pot (metal or earthenware cooking vessel that is usually round and deep; often has a handle and lid)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "kettle"):
teakettle (kettle for boiling water to make tea)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A large hemispherical brass or copper percussion instrument with a drumhead that can be tuned by adjusting the tension on it
Synonyms:
kettle; kettledrum; timpani; tympani; tympanum
Classified under:
Nouns denoting man-made objects
Hypernyms ("kettle" is a kind of...):
percussion instrument; percussive instrument (a musical instrument in which the sound is produced by one object striking another)
Sense 3
Meaning:
(geology) a hollow (typically filled by a lake) that results from the melting of a mass of ice trapped in glacial deposits
Synonyms:
kettle; kettle hole
Classified under:
Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)
Hypernyms ("kettle" is a kind of...):
hole; hollow (a depression hollowed out of solid matter)
Domain category:
geology (a science that deals with the history of the earth as recorded in rocks)
Sense 4
Meaning:
The quantity a kettle will hold
Synonyms:
kettle; kettleful
Classified under:
Nouns denoting quantities and units of measure
Hypernyms ("kettle" is a kind of...):
containerful (the quantity that a container will hold)
Context examples:
I will confess that I was far too much taken up with what was going on to be of the slightest use as sentry; indeed, I had already deserted my eastern loophole and crept up behind the captain, who had now seated himself on the threshold, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the water as it bubbled out of the old iron kettle in the sand.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
But if I should describe the kitchen grate, the prodigious pots and kettles, the joints of meat turning on the spits, with many other particulars, perhaps I should be hardly believed; at least a severe critic would be apt to think I enlarged a little, as travellers are often suspected to do.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Dorothy followed her through many of the beautiful rooms in her castle until they came to the kitchen, where the Witch bade her clean the pots and kettles and sweep the floor and keep the fire fed with wood.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
Susan and an attendant girl, whose inferior appearance informed Fanny, to her great surprise, that she had previously seen the upper servant, brought in everything necessary for the meal; Susan looking, as she put the kettle on the fire and glanced at her sister, as if divided between the agreeable triumph of shewing her activity and usefulness, and the dread of being thought to demean herself by such an office.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
The tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the hob.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I was boiling the kettle when I fell asleep, sir.
(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
When the water in the kettle was boiling, the cook went into the bedroom to fetch Fundevogel and throw him into it.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
By the apple of Eve! cried the fat knight, it appears to me that this wind brings a very savory smell of garlic and of onions from their cooking-kettles.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
There lay the cabinet before their eyes in the quiet lamplight, a good fire glowing and chattering on the hearth, the kettle singing its thin strain, a drawer or two open, papers neatly set forth on the business table, and nearer the fire, the things laid out for tea; the quietest room, you would have said, and, but for the glazed presses full of chemicals, the most commonplace that night in London.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
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