FURNACE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does furnace mean? 

• FURNACE (noun)
  The noun FURNACE has 1 sense:

1. an enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.

  Familiarity information: FURNACE used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• FURNACE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

An enclosed chamber in which heat is produced to heat buildings, destroy refuse, smelt or refine ores, etc.

Classified under:

Nouns denoting man-made objects

Hypernyms ("furnace" is a kind of...):

chamber (a natural or artificial enclosed space)

Meronyms (parts of "furnace"):

grate; grating (a frame of iron bars to hold a fire)

register (a regulator (as a sliding plate) for regulating the flow of air into a furnace or other heating device)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "furnace"):

athanor (a furnace that feeds itself so as to maintain a uniform temperature; used by alchemists)

blast furnace (a furnace for smelting of iron from iron oxide ores; combustion is intensified by a blast of air)

cremation chamber; crematorium; crematory (a furnace where a corpse can be burned and reduced to ashes)

cupola (a vertical cylindrical furnace for melting iron for casting)

electric furnace (any furnace in which the heat is provided by an electric current)

firebox (a furnace (as on a steam locomotive) in which fuel is burned)

forge (furnace consisting of a special hearth where metal is heated before shaping)

gas furnace (a furnace that burns gas)

incinerator (a furnace for incinerating (especially to dispose of refuse))

kiln (a furnace for firing or burning or drying such things as porcelain or bricks)

oil burner; oil furnace (a furnace that burns oil)

open-hearth furnace (a furnace for making steel in which the steel is placed on a shallow hearth and flames of burning gas and hot air play over it)

reverberatory furnace (a furnace in which the material that is being treated is heated indirectly by flames that are directed at the roof and walls of the furnace)

tank furnace (furnace into one end of which a batch of measured raw materials is shoveled and from the other end molten glass is obtained)

 Context examples 

The morning is bitterly cold; the furnace heat is grateful, though we have heavy fur coats.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

There was the engine-room, but the exertion of carrying them to the furnace was not worth while.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Supernovae like these — known as Type II — begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel, causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over.

(Kepler Catches Early Flash of an Exploding Star, NASA)

Yet I hold that the true art of my craft lies as much in the furnace as in the brush.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The stage was dark and the glow of the furnace had a fine effect, especially as real steam issued from the kettle when the witch took off the cover.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

To find out, they constructed an artificial furnace designed to replicate the naturally occurring inferno during Earth's violent formation – melting rocks at 1,300°C (2,370 Fahrenheit) in oxygen-poor conditions.

(Fiery Collisions That Gave Birth to Earth Could Have Evaporated 40% of Our World, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Where the sun had gone down in simple state—pure of the pomp of clouds—spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which—having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Godalming is shutting the furnace door....

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

It was a hot California night, and though the windows were thrown wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was a furnace.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)