hearth

CEFRC1

/ˈhɑːθ/

noun

Türkçe translations

Translating…

In plain English

  1. 01

    noun

    The floor area beside or inside a fireplace.

  2. 02

    noun

    Extra detail

    A fireplace: an open recess in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire may be built.

Examples

  • In Victorian age, women were considered "Angels of the hearth".

  • Without hearth or home.

At a glance

Sits at C1 on the CEFR scale

Senses
5
Parts of speech
1
Citations
5

Deep Dive

noun

Extra meanings

  1. A hearthstone, either as standalone or as the floor of an enclosed fireplace or oven.

  2. The place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos, fireplace, oven, smoke hood, or chimney.

  3. The lowest part of a metallurgical furnace.

More examples

In context

  • cooking on an open hearth

  • For by the hearth the children sit ⁠Cold in that atmosphere of Death, ⁠And scarce endure to draw the breath, Or like to noiseless phantoms flit: […]

  • Asatru is practised all over Northern Europe and also in North America. Like Druidry, it is organized into bodies with sub-groups, the hearths.

Quick test

Two questions on this entry. Nothing is scored.

Question 1 · Quick check

The family sat around the warm blank on a cold winter night.

Practise this properly in the app, where the word comes back before you forget it.

Nearby

Origin

noun

From Middle English herth, herthe, from Old English heorþ, from Proto-West Germanic *herþ, from Proto-Germanic *herþaz, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *kerh₃- (“heat; fire”). Cognate with West Frisian hurd, Dutch haard, German Herd, Swedish härd. The modern spelling is from an Middle English/Early Modern English /hɛːrθ/, from earlier /heːrθ/, levelled from inflected forms with /rð/ where the vowel would have been lengthened. The reflex of this pronunciation was preserved in obsolete dialectal /ˈhɜɹθ/.