Noun: kettle
| Singular | kettle |
| Plural | kettles |
Sample Sentences
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To cook pasta, you first need to put the kettle on.
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There's a hot kettle of soup on the stove.
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Stick the kettle on and we'll have a nice cup of tea.
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a kettle of hawks
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Kettles can consist of thousands of birds migrating together. [2010, Jean-Luc E. Cartron, Raptors of New Mexico:]
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the "River of Raptors" - an enormous kettle of hawks - circles over Cardel, in Veracruz, Mexico, in early October [2012, Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Clay Sutton, Hawks in Flight, HarperCollins:]
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then a pure Swainsons's hawk kettle of about 50 birds [1996, Clay Sutton, Patricia Sutton, How to Spot Hawks and Eagles, Houghton Mifflin, page 30:]
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When one hawk discovers a thermal, others notice its spiraling flight and join it, not out of any sense of sociability but because rising on a thermal and gliding to the next saves the energy of flapping on a long flight. Groups of hawks all spiraling on the same thermal are called kettles. [2012, Laur Erickson, Betsy Bowen, Hawk Ridge, University of Minnesota Press, page 3:]
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Near-synonym: cauldron
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Near-synonyms: cauldron, pickle; see also Thesaurus:difficult situation
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Well, we're really in a kettle now, aren't we?
Nouns inflected like kettle
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. From Middle English ketel, also chetel, from Old English ċietel (“kettle, cauldron”) and in Middle English possibly influenced by Old Norse ketill and both from Proto-Germanic *katilaz (“kettle, bucket, vessel”), of uncertain origin and formation. Usually regarded as a borrowing of Late Latin catīllus (“small bowl”), diminutive of Latin catinus (“deep bowl, vessel for cooking up or serving food”), however, the word may be Germanic confused with the Latin: compare Old English cete (“cooking pot”), Old High German chezzi (“a kettle, dish, bowl”), Icelandic kati, ketla (“a small boat”). Cognate with West Frisian tsjettel (“kettle”), Dutch ketel (“kettle”), German Kessel (“kettle”), Swedish kittel (“cauldron, kettle”), Gothic 𐌺𐌰𐍄𐌹𐌻𐍃 (katils, “kettle”), Finnish kattila, Polish kocioł (“cauldron”), Czech kotel (“boiler”), Russian котёл (kotjól, “boiler, cauldron”).
2. (watch): Cockney rhyming slang from 'kettle and hob' to 'fob' (fob watch). See: Middle English Nouns '
ketel', Old English Nouns '
ċietel', Old Norse Nouns '
ketill', Latin Nouns '
catinus', Old English Nouns '
cete', Icelandic Nouns '
kati', Dutch Nouns '
ketel', German Nouns '
Kessel', Swedish Nouns '
kittel', Gothic Nouns '
𐌺𐌰𐍄𐌹𐌻𐍃', Finnish Nouns '
kattila', Polish Nouns '
kocioł', Czech Nouns '
kotel', Russian Nouns '
котёл'.
Verbs referencing "kettle"
Irish Nouns
citeal, Zulu Nouns
igedlela.