: an enclosed structure in which heat is produced (as for heating a house or for reducing ore)
Examples of furnace in a Sentence
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Can that occur from sending a chunk of metal and silicon—even one that is boxcar-size or bigger—into a fusion furnace?
HAROLD SHAW PENOBSCOT, ME.—Aaron Shattuck, Scientific American, 20 May 2025 The Biden administration also issued new standards for furnaces, residential water heaters, stoves, washing machines and refigerators.—David J. Vogel, The Conversation, 17 Apr. 2025 Each unsuccessful vote will be burned in a furnace with chemicals to dye the plume a black color.—Timothy Nerozzi, The Washington Examiner, 2 May 2025 To remove any terrestrial water the 50-year-old samples would have absorbed since their return to Earth, Yeo and her team baked the samples overnight in a vacuum furnace.—Sharmila Kuthunur, Space.com, 25 Apr. 2025 See All Example Sentences for furnace
Word History
Etymology
Middle English fourneyse, fornes, furneis "oven, kiln, furnace," borrowed from Anglo-French furneis, fornays, fornaise (continental Old French forneis —attested once as masculine noun— fornaise, feminine noun), going back to Latin fornāc-, fornāx (also furnāx) "furnace, oven, kiln (for heating baths, smelting metal, firing clay)," from forn-, furn-, base of furnus, fornus "oven for baking" + -āc-, -āx, noun suffix; forn- going back to Indo-European *gwhr̥-no- (whence also Old Irish gorn "piece of burning wood," Old Russian grŭnŭ, gŭrnŭ "cauldron," Russian gorn "furnace, forge," Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian gŕno "coals for heating iron at a smithy," Sanskrit ghṛṇáḥ "heat, ardor"), suffixed derivative of a verbal base *gwher- "become warm" — more at therm
Note:
The variation between -or-, the expected outcome of zero grade, and -ur- in Latin has been explained as reflecting a rural/dialectal change of o to u, borrowing from Umbrian, or the result of a sound change of uncertain conditioning; see most recently Nicholas Zair, "The origins of -urC- for expected -orC- in Latin," Glotta, Band 93 (2017), pp. 255-89.
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