Meaning & use
wood stove
Last updated
Meanings
nouncountable
A closed metal heater in which logs are burned to warm a room or house.
Grammar: A countable noun: we installed a wood stove.
Patterns
- heat a room with a wood stove
- a wood stove in something
We heat the whole cabin with a small wood stove.
The wood stove glowed red as snow fell outside.
Installing a wood stove cut our winter electricity bill in half.
nouncountable
A stove with a cooking top that uses burning wood as its fuel.
Grammar: Used about cooking: she baked bread on the wood stove.
Patterns
- cook on a wood stove
My grandparents cooked every meal on a wood stove until the 1970s.
The old farmhouse still has a cast-iron wood stove in the kitchen.
Baking on a wood stove takes practice because the heat keeps changing.
Word forms
| plural | wood stoves |
|---|
Common combinations
- light a wood stove
- He lights the wood stove every morning in winter.
- stoke the wood stove
- She stoked the wood stove before going to bed.
- cast-iron wood stove
- A cast-iron wood stove stands in the living room.
- heat with a wood stove
- Many rural families heat with a wood stove.
- a roaring wood stove
- We came in from the cold to a roaring wood stove.
Synonyms and how they differ
- log burner
- Log burner is the usual British term and means almost the same thing, but it is used mostly for heating.
- fireplace
- A fireplace is usually open and built into a wall, while a wood stove is a closed freestanding unit.
- furnace
- A furnace heats a whole building through ducts and can use gas or oil, while a wood stove heats its own room directly.
- range
- A range is a large cooker, sometimes wood-fired, and focuses on cooking rather than heating.
Word family
Commonly confused: wood stove or fireplace?
wood stove vs fireplace
A fireplace is an open hearth, and much of its heat escapes up the chimney, while a wood stove is closed and more efficient.
Practice
The cabin has no central heating, so we keep warm with a ____ in the main room.
Choose one answer.
A wood stove is a heater that burns logs. A woodpile is only a stack of fuel, and a wood floor or stick cannot produce heat.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “wood stove”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.