boil
Noun pluralboils
Pluralboils
- 1To cook food by keeping it in water that is bubbling at a full boil.
Boil the lobster for about eight minutes before serving.
Many cooks boil vegetables briefly to keep their color.
Note
The food can stand on either side of the verb. You boil the eggs, and the rice is boiling, so the same word serves for the cook's action and the pot's progress. The witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth give it its most famous kitchen: 'Boyle thou first i'th'charmed pot.'
- 2To heat a liquid until it reaches the temperature where it begins changing into a gas.
Boil the water for a full minute to make it safe to drink.
She boiled the syrup until it began to steam.
Oppositecondense
Note
The object here is the liquid itself: water, syrup, milk. That sets it apart from the kettle sense, whose object is the vessel, and from the cooking sense, whose object is the food. Seethe and well are older native words for the same action. Its opposite, condense, runs the process backward, from vapor to liquid.
- 3To reach the temperature at which a liquid bubbles and starts changing into a gas.
The kettle takes about three minutes to boil.
As the pot boils, steam rises toward the ceiling.
- 4A localized, pus-filled lump that forms in the skin as a result of infection.
A boil had formed on his shoulder and needed to be lanced.
She covered the boil with a bandage until it healed.
Similarpimple, abscess, cyst, pustule, carbuncle
Note
A different word from the cooking verb, though the two share a spelling. It comes from Old English bȳl, 'swelling', and is kin to Dutch buil and German Beule. The verb arrived through French from Latin bulla, 'bubble'. A boil on the neck therefore has nothing to do with heat. Among its synonyms, furuncle and carbuncle belong to medical writing, while pimple is the everyday word.
- 5The temperature at which a liquid begins to change into a vapor; the boiling point.
Bring the stock to a rolling boil, then reduce the heat.
The sauce should never quite reach a boil, or it will curdle.
Note
Here the noun names a threshold rather than a thing. Water comes to the boil, a pot is brought to a boil, and stock is held at a rolling boil. Both the and a occur before it. The word reached English through Old French boillir from Latin bullīre, 'to bubble', and it pushed out the native Old English weallan, a cousin of modern well.
- 6A single instance or act of boiling something.
The recipe calls for a brief boil followed by a long simmer.
One more boil should reduce the liquid by half.
- 7To be stirred by strong emotion, especially anger; to feel intensely heated with passion.
His blood began to boil at the unfairness of the decision.
The crowd boiled with excitement as the team scored.
Note
Feeling pictured as heat, and an old picture: Surrey's Aeneid of 1557 already has a breast that 'boyld' with wrath. Blood boils with anger is the fixed phrase, but the image reaches past emotion. In Salman Rushdie's Fury (2001), 'the city boiled with money,' seething with activity rather than rage.
- 8To churn and bubble as though boiling; to effervesce.
The rapids boil over the hidden rocks below the bridge.
Lava boiled at the surface of the crater.
Similarchurn, seethe, froth, foam, bubble
Note
Water that churns without any heat behind it. The image belongs to seas, rapids and deep water, as in the King James Bible of 1611: 'He maketh the deep to boil like a pot.' The comparison with a cooking pot is built into the sense, and it shows up most naturally in the participle, as in the boiling waves.
- 9A dish consisting of food, especially seafood, cooked by boiling.
A Lowcountry boil brings together shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes.
They served the boil on newspaper spread across the table.
Note
Usually the second half of a compound: shrimp boil, crab boil, crawfish boil, with the seafood named first. John Besh's My New Orleans (2009) speaks of a typical Louisiana shrimp boil, and the word stretches to the boil seasoning sold for the pot. It names the food on the table, while the gathering names the party around it.
- 10A social gathering where people boil and eat food together, especially seafood such as crab or shrimp.
The whole neighborhood turned out for the annual crawfish boil.
She hosted a low-country boil with shrimp, sausage, and corn.
Note
An American word for the party rather than the plate. People are invited to a shrimp boil or attend a crab boil, much as they go to a clambake. C. Paige Gutierrez's Cajun Foodways (1992) groups crawfish and seafood boils with family boucheries and community festivals. The compounds match the dish, so context decides: at a boil is an event, while a boil with crab is food.
- 11To heat a container or its contents until the liquid inside bubbles and turns to steam.
Boil the kettle while I get the mugs ready.
She boiled a large pot for the soup.
Note
A British informal habit of naming the container instead of its contents. You boil the kettle, though strictly it is the water that boils. Stephen Fry's The Liar (1991) has the everyday line: 'I'll boil the kettle,' he said. Speakers elsewhere may find it odd and would put the kettle on or boil water.
- 12To produce or separate a substance by boiling a liquid away or letting it evaporate.
Workers boil the sap for hours to make maple syrup.
Salt makers boil the brine until only crystals remain in the pan.
Note
Here the object is what the pot yields. To boil sugar, salt or soap means to make it by boiling, not to heat it once it exists. Alex Groner's American Heritage History of American Business (2016) describes James Gamble, of Procter & Gamble, as the partner 'who boiled soap,' a trade named by its process.
- 13To be uncomfortably hot, as a room or day that feels far too warm.
The attic boils every afternoon in midsummer.
Cheap apartments boil under flat roofs all summer long.
Oppositefreeze
Note
Weather talk, normally in the progressive: it's boiling outside, it was boiling all week. The subject is the day, the place, or an empty it, and the complaint is usually exaggerated for effect. Swelter, bake and scorch are near neighbors, and freeze is the same kind of exaggeration at the cold end.
- 14To feel uncomfortably hot, as a person suffering in heavy clothes or strong heat.
She was boiling in her wool sweater by midday.
Commuters boil on packed trains during the summer rush.
Oppositefreeze
Note
The same heat, felt from the inside. A person is the subject: I'm boiling in here, she was boiling in that coat. Like the weather sense, it lives in the progressive. Bake fits the same frame (I'm baking), and freeze answers it from the other side.
- 15A bubbling or churning of liquid, especially the agitation of water as it heats or is disturbed.
A constant boil disturbed the surface where the hot spring fed the pool.
He swam to the place where Mary disappeared but there was neither boil nor gurgle on the water, nor even a bell of departing breath, to mark the place where his beloved had sunk.
1828, James Hogg, Mary BurnetNote
An older noun for the stir on a water's surface rather than the heat beneath it. James Hogg uses it in Mary Burnet (1828): where a woman has sunk, there is 'neither boil nor gurgle on the water.' Today bubbling or churning does this work, and boil in this sense reads as deliberately old-fashioned.
- 16To steep or soak something in warm water, as for softening or cleansing it.
To try whether seeds be old or new, the sense cannot inform; but if you boil them in water, the new seeds will sprout sooner.
1627, Francis [Bacon], Sylua SyluarumNote
An obsolete sense in which the water need only be warm. Francis Bacon, in 1627, tests seeds by boiling them in water to see which sprout sooner. That only makes sense if the seeds were soaked, not cooked. Readers of older prose should keep this meaning in mind before picturing a rolling boil.
- 17A group of hawks, considered together as a single flock in flight.
A boil of hawks wheeled over the ridge at dusk.
The birders counted a boil of hawks soaring on the thermals.
Similarkettle
Note
A rare and nonstandard group name, and it is safest in writing that enjoys playing with collective nouns. A birder's plain account would say a group or flock of hawks instead. Anyone who uses it should expect some readers not to recognize it.
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Origins
This sense, meaning a skin swelling, comes from Middle English 'bile', from Old English 'bȳl', 'bȳle' ('boil, swelling'), from Proto-Germanic '*būlijō'. It is related to Dutch 'buil', German 'Beule', and Icelandic 'beyla'. The expected form would be 'bile', but the vowel may have been rounded by the initial b- or by association with the verb 'boil'.
This verb comes from Middle English 'boillen', from Old French 'boillir' (modern French 'bouillir'), from Latin 'bullīre' ('to bubble, boil'), from 'bulla' ('bubble'). It displaced the native Old English 'weallan' and 'wiellan'.