Kitchen Meaning
/ˈkɪt͡ʃ(ɪ)n/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA room or area for preparing food.
nounCuisine; style of cooking.
Sentence Examples
When she returned home from school, she began to help her mother in the kitchen.
There is a kitchen garden behind my house.
We ate at the kitchen table.
CEFR Practice Quiz
She cooked dinner in the ____ while the children played in the living room.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The delicious smell of baking bread filled the entire ____ and made everyone feel very hungry today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English kichene, kichen, from Old English cyċen, cyċene, from Proto-West Germanic *kukinā, a borrowing from Late Latin cocīna, from earlier coquīna (“kitchen; cuisine”), from coquō (“to cook”), from Proto-Indo-European *pekʷ- (“to cook, become ripe”). In other languages, the cognate term often refers both to the room and the type of cooking. In English, the distinction is generally made via the etymological twins kitchen (“room”) (Latin via Germanic) and cuisine (“type of cooking”) (Latin via French).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Everything a living animal could do to destroy and to desecrate bed and walls had been done. […] A canister of flour from the kitchen had been thrown at the looking-glass and lay like trampled snow over the remains of a decent blue suit with the lining ripped out which lay on top of the ruin of a plastic wardrobe."
— 1963, Margery Allingham, “Foreword”, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
"I always leave the stuff piled up, piled up in the sink / But you will always find him in the kitchen at parties"
— 1980, Jona Lewie, Keef Trouble, “You'll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties”, performed by Jona Lewie:
"I had been trained with the rigidity and discipline of the French kitchen, and now I was embracing American informality."
— 2011, Jacques Pépin, Essential Pépin: More Than 700 All-Time Favorites from My Life in Food, →ISBN:
"My palate passionately lies in the savory kitchen with its salty fats and infernal flavors of chilies and spices."
— 2011, Daniel Orr, Paradise Kitchen: Caribbean Cooking with Chef Daniel Orr, →ISBN, page 221:
"Kline wrote that, according to various recent surveys, the young Israeli-born generation generally preferred a Mediterranean diet and dishes from the “Oriental” kitchen."
— 2015, Yael Raviv, Falafel Nation: Cuisine and the Making of National Identity in Israel, →ISBN:
Explore More A1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
She cooked dinner in the ____ while the children played in the living room.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The delicious smell of baking bread filled the entire ____ and made everyone feel very hungry today.