I. ˈstōv noun
( -s )
Usage: often attributive
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, heated room, steam room; akin to Old English stofa steam room, Old High German stuba heated room, steam room, Old Norse stofa; all from a prehistoric West Germanic-North Germanic word derived from (assumed) Vulgar Latin extufa, from extufare to heat with steam, from Latin ex- ex- (I) + (assumed) Vulgar Latin tufus steam, from Greek typhos smoke, steam — more at typhus
1. obsolete
a. : a steam room or hot air chamber for inducing sweating : stew
you shall sweat there … as well as in all the stoves in Sweden — Ben Jonson
b. : a room heated by a furnace
found him in his stove with one hand dandling his child … in the other holding a book — Thomas Fuller
2.
a. : a portable or fixed apparatus that burns fuel or uses electricity to produce heat (as for cooking or heating) — compare franklin stove , oilstove , oven , potbelly , range
b. : a device that generates heat for special purposes (as for heating tools or heating air for a hot blast) — compare checkerwork 3
c. : kiln
d. : foot stove
e. Britain : grate
3. chiefly Britain : a hothouse usually having a controlled humid atmosphere and used especially for the cultivation of tropical exotics
orchids requiring stove conditions
broadly : greenhouse
II. transitive verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
1.
a. archaic : to keep (a person) in a heated room
mistaken medical opinions … induced physicians to stove their patients — Thomas Beddoes
b. : to subject to heat : dry in or as if in a stove
the bars of soap … are stoved by being placed on shallow trays in stacks in a long rectangular tunnel — T.P.Hilditch
dirty clay pipes were stoved in a brick oven and restored — F.W.Burgess
2. chiefly Britain : to raise (plants) in a stove (sense 3)
3. chiefly Scotland : stew
4.
a. : to expose (as damp yarn or cloth to be bleached or clothing to be disinfected) to sulfur dioxide
b. : to treat (a silk cocoon) with heat to kill the chrysalis
III.
past of stave
IV. ˈstōv transitive verb
( -ed/-ing/-s )
Etymology: from stove, past participle of stave (II)
: stave 2