Kiln Meaning
/kɪln/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounAn oven or furnace or a heated chamber, for the purpose of hardening, burning, calcining or drying anything; for example, firing ceramics, curing or preserving tobacco, or drying grain.
verbTo bake in a kiln; to fire.
Sentence Examples
I used to make ash trays in a kiln at school.
The kiln must reach 1400 degree centigrade in order to melt glass.
CEFR Practice Quiz
Using high temperatures, the ceramic artist hardened the pot in the ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ceramic artist placed her clay pots in a very hot ____ to bake them until they became hard today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English kilne, from Old English cyln, cylen, cylin (“large oven, kiln”), from Latin culīna (“kitchen, kitchen stove”). Middle English -ln(e) usually becomes modern -ll as in mill. The pronunciation /kɪln/ may be based on dialects in which this simplification did not take place, but it must have been at least reinforced by spelling pronunciation.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"One typical Grecian kiln engorged one thousand muleloads of juniper wood in a single burn. Fifty such kilns would devour six thousand metric tons of trees and brush annually."
— 2006, Edwin Black, chapter 2, in Internal Combustion:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
Using high temperatures, the ceramic artist hardened the pot in the ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The ceramic artist placed her clay pots in a very hot ____ to bake them until they became hard today.