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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

oven.

A chamber used for baking or heating.

4 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈʌ.vn̩/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈʌv.ən/General-American, UK

  1. A chamber used for baking or heating.

  2. A very hot place.

    colloquial · figuratively
Where this word comes from

From Middle English oven, from Old English ofn (“oven”), from Proto-West Germanic *ofn (“oven”), from Proto-Germanic *uhnaz, *uhwnaz (“oven”). Cognate with West Frisian ûne (“oven”), Dutch oven (“oven”), Low German Aven (“oven”), German Ofen (“oven”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ovn (“oven”), Faroese ovnur (“oven”), Icelandic ofn (“oven”), Norwegian Nynorsk omn (“oven”), Swedish ugn (“oven”), Finnish uuni (“oven”), Gothic 𐌰𐌿𐌷𐌽𐍃 (auhns, “oven”)), probably from a Proto-Indo-European *aukʷ- (“cooking pot”), *Hukʷ-, *ukʷnos (compare Sanskrit उखा (ukhā, “boiler, cauldron”), Albanian anë (“vessel, cooker”), Latin aulla, olla (“pot, jar”), Ancient Greek ἰπνός (ipnós, “oven, furnace”)). The modern pronunciation shows a sound change in which Middle English /ɔv/ is changed to /uv/; compare the phonetic development of Coventry and shovel.

verb/ˈʌ.vn̩/General-American, Received-Pronunciation/ˈʌv.ən/General-American, UK

  1. To cook in an oven.

    colloquial · informal · transitive
    I'm gonna oven the pie for about 30 minutes, mate.
Where this word comes from

From Middle English oven, from Old English ofn (“oven”), from Proto-West Germanic *ofn (“oven”), from Proto-Germanic *uhnaz, *uhwnaz (“oven”). Cognate with West Frisian ûne (“oven”), Dutch oven (“oven”), Low German Aven (“oven”), German Ofen (“oven”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål ovn (“oven”), Faroese ovnur (“oven”), Icelandic ofn (“oven”), Norwegian Nynorsk omn (“oven”), Swedish ugn (“oven”), Finnish uuni (“oven”), Gothic 𐌰𐌿𐌷𐌽𐍃 (auhns, “oven”)), probably from a Proto-Indo-European *aukʷ- (“cooking pot”), *Hukʷ-, *ukʷnos (compare Sanskrit उखा (ukhā, “boiler, cauldron”), Albanian anë (“vessel, cooker”), Latin aulla, olla (“pot, jar”), Ancient Greek ἰπνός (ipnós, “oven, furnace”)). The modern pronunciation shows a sound change in which Middle English /ɔv/ is changed to /uv/; compare the phonetic development of Coventry and shovel.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.