kiln

KILN/kɪln/

Pluralkilns

Verbkilns, kilning, kilned

2 meanings of kiln

1
nouncountable
A heated chamber, oven, or furnace used to harden, burn, dry, or process materials such as clay, bricks, grain, or tobacco.
The studio's electric kiln fires pottery at over twelve hundred degrees Celsius.
Workers stacked seasoned timber inside the kiln to dry it before milling.
Similaroven, furnace
Note
A kitchen word that left the kitchen: Old English cyln came from Latin culīna, "kitchen, kitchen stove," and kept the sense of a large oven once the cooking dropped away. The spelling is a survivor too. Middle English -ln usually turned into -ll, as in mill, but kiln held on to its n. Edwin Black's Internal Combustion (2006) shows the cost: one Grecian kiln burned a thousand muleloads of juniper in a single burn.
2
verbtransitive
To bake or fire something in a kiln, hardening or drying it with sustained heat.
Artisans kiln the glazed pottery a second time to set the colors.
The timber was kilned to remove moisture before it could be sold as lumber.
Similarfire, bake, dry

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Origin

From Middle English "kilne," from Old English "cyln" ("large oven, kiln"), which came from Latin "culina" ("kitchen, kitchen stove").