Furnace: The Fire at the Bottom of Industry
A furnace is an enclosed chamber for intense heat. In America it is also the household heater; in Britain that is a boiler.
A furnace is a closed chamber built to hold fire hot enough to melt or transform what is put in it. A blast furnace does not simply burn: air is forced through the charge so that the fuel and the ore react, which is how iron has been made for six hundred years. In American homes, furnace also means the heating unit — Britain calls that a boiler.
- An enclosed chamber for intense heat. *A steel furnace.*
- A domestic heating unit (American). *The furnace failed in January.*
- Somewhere very hot (figurative). *The city was a furnace in August.*
Word forms
| Form | Word | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Noun | furnace | A hot furnace. |
| Plural | furnaces | Three furnaces. |
| Compound | blast furnace | A blast furnace. |
| Related | kiln | A pottery kiln. |
| Related | forge | The blacksmith's forge. |
How it is used in a sentence
- The blast furnace ran continuously for years.They are expensive to restart, so they rarely stop.
- Our furnace needs servicing.American home heating.
- The kitchen was a furnace by noon.Figurative use for heat.
Hot chambers, distinguished
- Furnace — melts or smelts, the hottest
- Kiln — fires clay, bricks or lime
- Forge — heats metal to be worked, not melted
- Oven — cooks food
- Incinerator — burns waste
From Old French *fornaise*, from Latin *fornax*, oven, related to *fornus*. The same Latin root gives Italian *forno* and Spanish *horno*, both meaning oven.
Furnace or boiler?
An American furnace heats air; a British boiler heats water. Both warm a house, by different means.
Why is it called a blast furnace?
Because air is blasted through the burning charge under pressure, raising the temperature far above what a natural draught could reach.