: an oven, furnace, or heated enclosure used for processing a substance by burning, firing, or drying
kiln
transitive verb
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The word kiln was kindled in Old English as a bundle of c-y-l-n. Unlike many words that descend from Old English, however, kiln is not ultimately Germanic in origin but was borrowed from Latin culina, meaning "kitchen," an ancestor of the English word culinary, which has been a menu option in English since the 17th century. An ingredient in culina is coquere, meaning "to cook" in Latin.
Examples of kiln in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
The high temperatures in the kiln rearrange the atoms in the soft clay.
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Tim Carter, Hartford Courant, 17 May 2025
The hour circle is decorated with miniature painting, which involved using 28 different colors, and took 32 hours for the painting and eight hours of firing in a kiln.
—Carol Besler, Forbes, 26 Mar. 2025
To make concrete, minerals need to be crushed and cooked in a kiln heated to temperatures above 2,600 °F (1,427 °C) to produce a material known as klinker.
—Michael Franco, New Atlas, 21 Mar. 2025
Makky would make at least ten molds off the Steinbeck plaque, then cook them in a kiln at a thousand degrees, pour in molten nickel bronze, break the molds off, and water down the sand for reuse.
—Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025
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Tim Carter, Hartford Courant, 17 May 2025
The hour circle is decorated with miniature painting, which involved using 28 different colors, and took 32 hours for the painting and eight hours of firing in a kiln.
—Carol Besler, Forbes, 26 Mar. 2025
To make concrete, minerals need to be crushed and cooked in a kiln heated to temperatures above 2,600 °F (1,427 °C) to produce a material known as klinker.
—Michael Franco, New Atlas, 21 Mar. 2025
Makky would make at least ten molds off the Steinbeck plaque, then cook them in a kiln at a thousand degrees, pour in molten nickel bronze, break the molds off, and water down the sand for reuse.
—Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 24 Feb. 2025
See All Example Sentences for kiln
Cite this Entry
“Kiln.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kiln. Accessed 4 Jun. 2025.
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