a kitchen appliance used for cooking food
"dinner was already on the stove"
any heating apparatus
"The old stove in the corner provided enough heat to keep the entire room warm during the winter."
A heater, a closed apparatus to burn fuel for the warming of a room.
"The old iron stove in the corner crackled softly as it burned wood to keep the drafty cabin warm during the winter night."
In plain English: A stove is an appliance used to cook food by heating it with gas, electricity, or oil.
"She turned on the stove to heat up some soup for dinner."
Usage: In everyday American English, this word refers specifically to an appliance used for cooking food rather than heating rooms; British speakers often use "oven" instead when referring only to the enclosed baking chamber within such a device. Avoid using it as a verb unless you are describing something being heated or dried by direct contact with hot air in that specific apparatus.
To heat or dry, as in a stove.
"The broken barrel finally gave way when it began to stove under the heavy weight of the stormwater."
simple past tense and past participle of stave
In plain English: To stove something means to hit it hard enough to break it into pieces.
"I accidentally burned my hand when I reached for something that was still hot on the stove."
The word "stove" comes from Middle Dutch or Middle Low German, where it originally meant a heated room or bathhouse before evolving to refer specifically to an appliance for cooking or heating. Its ancient roots in Proto-West Germanic also influenced similar words across Slavic and Romance languages.