Word
hearth
US/ˈhɑɹθ/
UK/hˈɑːθ/
Definitions
01part of a fireplace
n. the floor of a fireplace, usually made of stone or brick, that extends into a room.
n. the floor of a fireplace, typically consisting of a stone or brick slab that extends into the room to protect the floor from heat.
“The cat lay sleeping on the warm stone hearth after the fire went out.”
“The renovation involved replacing the cracked Victorian tiles on the hearth with a single, polished slab of dark granite.”
02home and family
n. a word for the home or the center of family life.
n. a metonym for the home, domestic life, or the family circle.
“They were happy to return to their own hearth after months of traveling.”
“In many traditional cultures, the goddess of the hearth was worshipped as the protector of the family and the domestic sphere.”
Literary
03industrial furnace part
n. the bottom part of a large oven used for melting metal.
n. the lowest part of a metallurgical furnace where the molten metal collects.
“The molten iron gathered at the bottom of the furnace hearth.”
“Engineers inspected the refractory lining of the hearth to ensure it could withstand the extreme temperatures of the smelting process.”
Technical
Real-World Examples
“They hunted large animals, cooked fish using controlled fire, and organized many aspects of daily life around communal hearths.” “A cave perched more than 7,300 feet (2,235 meters) above sea level contains dozens of ancient hearths filled with fragments of green mineral that may point to early copper mining activities.” Etymology
From Middle English herth, herthe, from Old English heorþ, from Proto-West Germanic herþ, from Proto-Germanic herþaz, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *kerh₃- (“heat; fire”). Cognate with West Frisian hurd, Dutch haard, German Herd, Swedish härd.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Word family
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/hearth