furnace

/ˈfʌrnəs/

/ˈfʌnɪs/

Other forms: furnaces

A furnace is an appliance that heats houses and buildings by burning fuel or circulating hot water. Your furnace might rumble in the basement, sending heat up through your house's radiators.

Most houses in cold climates have a furnace, to warm their rooms during the chilly months of the year. Furnaces also have industrial uses, like burning trash or extracting ore from metal. If someone says, "It's as hot as a furnace in this classroom!" they mean that it's extremely hot. Furnace comes from the Old French fornaise, "oven," with the Latin root word fornacem, "oven or kiln."

Definitions of furnace

1. noun

   an enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.
   types:

   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, 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

   brickkiln

   a kiln for making bricks

   dry kiln

   a kiln for drying and seasoning lumber

   gas oven

   a cremation chamber fueled by gas

   limekiln

   a kiln used to reduce naturally occurring forms of calcium carbonate to lime

   muffle

   a kiln with an inner chamber for firing things at a low temperature

   oast

   a kiln for drying hops

   Stassano furnace, electric-arc furnace

   an electric furnace in which an electric arc provides the source of heat for making steel

   type of:

   chamber

   a natural or artificial enclosed space