Cauldron

How to spell cauldron

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce cauldron

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does cauldron mean?

1. nounA large metal pot, usually with a rounded base, used for boiling or cooking over a fire.

Cauldron in a sentence

• The campsite cook stirred the soup in a heavy iron cauldron.

• The museum displayed a medieval cauldron once used to heat water for the whole household.

Where does cauldron come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word travelled into English from Anglo-Norman and Old French 'caudron', a large cooking pot, which itself descended from the Latin 'caldaria', meaning a hot bath or boiling vessel, ultimately from 'calidus', the Latin adjective for 'hot' or 'warm'. When English first borrowed it in the 1200s it was written without an 'l', much like the French form, so spellings such as 'caudron' and 'caudroun' were common. Scholars later reinserted the silent 'l' to make the word visibly echo its Latin ancestor 'caldaria', which is exactly why modern 'cauldron' carries a letter you do not hear. The same hot 'calidus' root warms a surprising family of relatives, including 'scald', 'chowder', and even 'nonchalant'. That buried Latin 'l', combined with the 'au' vowel, is the spelling trap: the word looks as though it should follow how it sounds, but it preserves an older written history instead.

How the word is built

• cauldr- (from Latin caldaria: hot bath, pot)
• -on (noun suffix)