different between furnace vs cresset

English

Etymology

From Middle English forneys, from Old French fornais (French fournaise), from Latin forn?x.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /?f?n?s/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?f??n?s/

Noun

furnace (plural furnaces)

1. (Britain) An industrial heating device, e.g. for smelting metal or baking ceramics.
2. (US, Canada) A device that provides heat for a building; a space heater.
3. (colloquial) Any area that is excessively hot.
4. (figuratively) A place or time of punishment, affliction, or great trial; severe experience or discipline.
   • c. 1530, William Tyndale, Tyndale Bible, Deuteronomy 4:20:

     For the Lorde toke you and broughte you out of the yernen fornace of Egipte, to be vnto him a people of enheritaunce, as it is come to passe this daye.

Derived terms

• furnacey

Translations

Verb

furnace (third-person singular simple present furnaces, present participle furnacing, simple past and past participle furnaced)

1. To heat in a furnace.
2. To exhale like a furnace.

Anagrams

• Fraunce

English

Etymology

From Old French crasset, cresset (“sort of lamp or torch”); perhaps of Old Dutch or Old High German origin, and akin to English cruse, French creuset (“crucible”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?k??s?t/

Noun

cresset (plural cressets)

1. A metal cup, suspended from a pole and filled with burning pitch etc; once used as portable illumination.
   • 1835, William Wordsworth, Stanzas suggested in a Steamboat off St. Bees' Head, on the coast of Cumberland

     As a cresset true that darts its length / Of beamy lustre from a tower of strength.

2. (coopering) A small furnace or iron cage to hold fire for charring the inside of a cask, and making the staves flexible.
   • 1805–1814, Dante Alighieri, Henry Francis Cary (translator), The Divine Comedy, "Inferno", Canto VIII

     We reach'd the lofty turret's base, our eyes / its height ascended, where we mark'd uphung / two cressets and another saw from far

   (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

Translations

See also

• brazier

Anagrams

• Secrest, resects, secrets