Kiln

How to spell kiln

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce kiln

What does kiln mean?

1. nounA furnace or oven used for firing, drying, or hardening materials such as clay, bricks, or lime.

Kiln in a sentence

• The potter loaded the glazed mugs into the kiln overnight.

• The brickworks ran the kiln at over a thousand degrees.

Where does kiln come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Old English cyln or cylene, the name for an oven used to dry or bake materials. That term was itself an early borrowing from the Latin culina, which meant 'kitchen' or 'cooking stove', the same root that gave us 'culinary'. The sense narrowed over time from any cooking hearth to the specialised, high heat oven used for hardening pottery, drying grain, or burning lime. Because the word arrived so early, before the Norman period, its spelling settled into a compact native shape rather than a Latin looking one. The final 'n' is the chief trap, since many speakers say the word as if it ended in 'kill', which can tempt writers to drop the silent feeling letter.

How the word is built

• kiln (single root, from Old English cyln meaning oven or furnace; no prefix or suffix)