1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Stove

STOVE, an apparatus for heating a room, building, greenhouse or hothouse, or for cooking. It is essentially closed or partially closed, as distinct from the open grate or fireplace, and consists of a receiver in which the fuel is burned, of cast or sheet-iron, tiles cemented together and backed or even of solid masonry. Stoves may be classified according to the fuel burned (see Heating). The word was originally of wider meaning and was used of a heated room, house or chamber, thus the O. Eng. stofa glosses balneum, and mod. Ger. Stube and Dan. stue mean merely a room, O. H. Ger. Stuba, Stupa being used of a heated bathroom; early Du. stove also was used in this wider sense, the later form stoof is used as in modern English, and this may be the immediate source of the present meaning, the early word having been lost. Romanic languages borrowed it, e.g. Ital. stufa, Ft. Stuve, O. Fr. étuve, whence was adapted Eng. "stew," properly a bath or hothouse, used chiefly in plural "stews," a brothel, and "to stew," originally to bathe, then to boil slowly, and as a noun, a mess of stewed meat. "Stew," a fish-pond, is a Low German word stouwe, dam, weir, fish-pond, from stouwen, to dam up, cf. Ger. stauen, Eng. stow.