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kettle
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
kettle
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
electric light/kettle/cooker etc
▪ the heat from a small electric fire
fish kettle
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
black
▪ In one corner stood a gas-stove on which a black kettle simmered gently.
▪ She filled the big, black kettle and set it over the burner.
▪ BDownstairs, at the neighboring La Colonial Market, an employee barbecues chicken in a black kettle on the sidewalk.
different
▪ It was soon clear that this was an entirely different kettle of fish.
▪ Tonally the Atlantis is a different kettle of fish from any Rick I've ever played before.
▪ The other envelope, however, was a different kettle of fish.
▪ Hamsters, on the other hand, are a different kettle of piranhas altogether.
▪ The Schaubu hne is a different kettle of fish.
▪ Miss Braithwaite was clearly a different kettle of fish from the other Deaconess he'd met, Miss Tilley.
▪ Whether or not he would ever admit it was a different kettle of fish entirely.
▪ But the wilful destruction of young lives was a different kettle of fish altogether.
electric
▪ Yawning freely, he filled the electric kettle with water and switched it on.
▪ You can buy a new electric tea kettle featuring easy-to-dismember recyclable parts.
▪ She had not noticed Amy filling and plugging in an electric kettle, but it was singing efficiently next to the cooker.
▪ Steven loved gadgets, and Jean had one of the latest square white plastic electric kettles.
▪ The black markets proffer Levis, pirated rave music and electric kettles.
▪ The prosecution alleges Hammond attacked the girl with his hands, fists, a ruler and the flex from an electric kettle.
▪ But no sooner had she switched on the electric kettle than the phone began to ring.
▪ That, and the electric kettle, given to me by a good friend, are a great blessing.
■ VERB
boil
▪ Nora objects, it's been nothing but ringing phones and boiling kettles, doorbells and toilets, since you began.
▪ While she was making the coffee, boiling her kettle, he glanced across at her Herald Tribune.
▪ Oh, to boil a kettle on red-hot rock.
▪ And I was impressed that a Harley Street gynaecologist was prepared to boil his own kettle.
▪ They boiled the kettle for coffee and cleared a space on the other end of Kenneth's desk.
▪ He boils a kettle and pours it in to make the water very hot.
fill
▪ She filled the kettle and set it to boil.
▪ Marion filled the kettle and plugged it in.
▪ Go and fill the kettle to celebrate.
▪ Quickly while the toilet was still flushing, Philip filled the kettle.
▪ My breath was like dragon smoke as I filled the kettle.
▪ Turning away from him, she filled the kettle and set it on the stove.
▪ Turning away he filled the kettle with water.
▪ She filled the kettle from the freshwater tap, then took a box of chilled orange juice from the well-stocked ice-box.
put
▪ Perhaps I'd better put the kettle on and crack open a packet of my finest custard creams.
▪ Rain again! he thought, as he put the tea kettle on.
▪ She smiled and went and put the kettle on, and listened as he wriggled like a worm on a hook.
▪ Calling to Lizzie to put the kettle oD, she hurried out to the hammock and spread herself there to wait.
▪ Wearily she put on the kettle for the tea.
▪ Two hours later, he put the kettle on to boil.
▪ She put on the kettle, craving her morning cup of coffee.
▪ They'd even gone to the trouble of putting the kettle on.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(a case of) the pot calling the kettle black
▪ It was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Kettle

Kettle \Ket"tle\ (k[e^]t"t'l), n. [OE. ketel; cf. AS. cetel, cetil, cytel; akin to D. kjedel, G. kessel, OHG. chezzil, Icel. ketill, SW. kittel, Dan. kjedel, Goth. katils; all perh. fr. L. catillus, dim. of catinus a deep vessel, bowl; but cf. also OHG. chezz[=i] kettle, Icel. kati small ship.] A metallic vessel, with a wide mouth, often without a cover, used for heating and boiling water or other liguids.

Kettle pins, ninepins; skittles. [Obs.]
--Shelton.

Kettle stitch (Bookbinding), the stitch made in sewing at the head and tail of a book.
--Knight.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
kettle

Old English cetil (Mercian), from Proto-Germanic *katilaz (compare Old Saxon ketel, Old Frisian zetel, Middle Dutch ketel, Old High German kezzil, German Kessel), probably from Latin catillus "deep pan or dish for cooking," diminutive of catinus "bowl, dish, pot." One of the few Latin loan-words in Proto-Germanic, along with *punda- "measure of weight or money" (see pound (n.1)) and a word relating to "merchant" that yielded cheap (adj.). "[I]t is striking that all have something to do with trade" [Don Ringe, "From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic," Oxford 2006]. Spelling with a -k- (c.1300) probably is from influence of Old Norse cognate ketill. The smaller sense of "tea-kettle" is attested by 1769.

Wiktionary
kettle

n. 1 A vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food, usually metal and equipped with a lid. Category:en:Cookware and bakeware 2 The quantity held by a kettle. 3 (context British English) A vessel for boiling water for tea; a teakettle. 4 (context geology English) A kettle hole, sometimes any pothole. 5 (anchor: Raptors)(context ornithology English) A collective term for a group of raptors riding a thermal, especially when migration. 6 (context rail transport slang English) A steam locomotive 7 (context musical instruments English) A kettledrum. vb. (context British of the police English) To contain demonstrators in a confined are

WordNet
kettle
  1. n. a metal pot for stewing or boiling; usually has a lid [syn: boiler]

  2. the quantity a kettle will hold [syn: kettleful]

  3. (geology) a hollow (typically filled by a lake) that results from the melting of a mass of ice trapped in glacial deposits [syn: kettle hole]

  4. a large hemispherical brass or copper percussion instrument with a drumhead that can be tuned by adjusting the tension on it [syn: kettledrum, tympanum, tympani, timpani]

Gazetteer
Wikipedia
Kettle (landform)

A kettle (kettle hole, pothole) is a shallow, sediment-filled body of water formed by retreating glaciers or draining floodwaters. The kettles are formed as a result of blocks of ice calving from glaciers and becoming submerged in the sediment on the outwash plain. Another source is the sudden drainage of an ice-dammed lake. When the block melts, the hole it leaves behind is a kettle. As the ice melts, ramparts can form around the edge of the kettle hole. The lakes that fill these holes are seldom more than and eventually become filled with sediment. In acid conditions, a kettle bog may form but in alkaline conditions, it will be kettle peatland.

Kettle

A kettle, sometimes called a tea kettle or teakettle, is a type of pot, typically metal, specialized for boiling water, with a lid, spout and handle, or a small kitchen appliance of similar shape that functions in a self-contained manner. Kettles can be heated either by placing on a stove, or by their own internal electric heating element in the appliance versions.

Kettle (disambiguation)

A kettle is a vessel for heating water. Kettle may also refer to:

Kettle (birds)

A kettle is a term that birders use to describe a group of birds wheeling and circling in the air. The kettle may be composed of several different species at the same time. Nature photographer M. Timothy O'Keefe theorizes that the word derives from the appearance of birds circling tightly in a thermal updraft "like something boiling in a cauldron." Ornithologist Donald Heintzelman has done more than anyone to popularize the term kettle, using the term at least as early as 1970 in his book Hawks of New Jersey to describe raptor flight, followed by uses in print over four decades. The related terms "caldron" and "boil" are also heard to describe the same sorts of raptor behavior. Osprey-watcher David Gessner, however, claims a Pennsylvania lowland called the Kettle ("der Kessel" in Pennsylvania Dutch), near Hawk Mountain, is the source of the term.

In some species—e.g., the terns of Nantucket—kettling behavior is evidently a way of "staging" a flock in readiness for migration. Pre-migrational turkey vultures kettle by the hundreds in the thermals that rise over Vancouver Island before they venture across the Strait of Juan de Fuca toward Washington State. At Hawk Mountain, broad-winged hawks form kettles in September before flying south. Kettling apparently serves as a form of avian communication—an announcement of imminent departure—as well as a way of gaining altitude and conserving strength.

Usage examples of "kettle".

Well, I gets near the Major at table, and afore me stood a china utensil with two handles, full of soup, about the size of a foot-tub, with a large silver scoop in it, near about as big as a ladle of a maple sugar kettle.

At length they reached a round chamber, some fifty feet across, scattered with low tables and tiny benches round a central open hearth, where a low fire burned and a huge kettle hung from a pair of andirons and a cross-bar.

He slapped his thigh and looked across to where Asch was staring into the fire, waiting for the kettle to boil.

He put a kettle on to make coffee while Mrs Biggs bustled about picking things up and putting them down again in a manner which suggested that a great deal of work was being done but which merely helped to emphasize her feelings.

Can of beere and a bisket of bread to stay their stomacks till the kettle be boiled.

Afterward there was dancing, even an improvised bong dance with a kettle instead of the steel drum, which His Majesty joined but Her Majesty disdained.

Dilly sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or something like that.

Moira ladled a cup of comfrey and borage from the kettle Eibhlin kept hot on the fire.

The lid of the kettle was of heavy cast iron, and fitted tightly, but McCoy now plastered it about with clay before he filled his sawn calabash with water and stood a pewter half-pint on a rock, where it would catch the drip from the coil.

Gruppen II and III into Hauptgruppe a for cryptography, Gruppen IV and V into Hauptgruppe b for cryptanalysis, each with its own head who reported to Kettler.

As the three lancers pass the south side of the square in the early-morning light, Lorn can see a number of people under the porch of the Cuprite Kettle, the largest inn in Assyadt.

She breathed, hardly hearing Cassil moving around, tucking the baby into a blanket on the sleeping shelf, poking the fire into a blaze, swinging the dap kettle over the flames.

I was taken up with the canoness and did not stir, and consequently Kettler did not notice me, while the lady in great delight at seeing me left him no time to examine his guests, and he was soon talking to some people at the other end of the room.

In the common room, Ayrlyn was breaking off a number of chunks of dried meat and easing them into the iron kettle that hung over the hearth.

She paused, and Saken and Erdene picked up the kettle and poured steaming water down over the wool, hair, and mat, soaking every inch.