Stoke

How to spell stoke

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce stoke

What does stoke mean?

1. verbTo add fuel to a fire or furnace and keep it burning.
2. verbTo encourage or intensify a strong feeling, situation or interest.

Stoke in a sentence

• He rose before dawn to stoke the wood burner in the cottage.

• The leaked memo only served to stoke public anger about the fees.

• The crew worked in shifts to stoke the ship's coal furnace.

• Aggressive headlines tend to stoke fear among nervous investors.

Where does stoke come from?

Language of origin: Dutch

Stoke entered English in the late 1600s as a back-formation from the noun 'stoker', which English borrowed from Dutch. The Dutch 'stoker' was the agent noun built on the verb 'stoken', meaning to feed or tend a fire and to push fuel into a furnace. Because English speakers heard 'stoker' as someone who 'stokes', they peeled off the verb 'stoke' from it, which is why the verb appears in the record slightly after the job title. The underlying Dutch root carried the idea of poking or thrusting, the same notion behind a 'stick', so the word originally described the very physical act of jabbing fuel into a glowing fire. From that literal furnace sense the figurative meaning grew naturally: just as you build up a fire, you can 'stoke' anger, ambition or rumour until it blazes.

How the word is built

• stoke (verb, back-formed from stoker: one who tends a furnace)