to preheat the oven
7
1.0
- phrasal verb
:
precalentar el horno
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease 2 round cake pans.
Examples
-
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F or as high as your oven will go.
Blog text (6) -
Place a rack in the center and upper third of the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Blog text (4) -
Step one: Preheat the oven.
Academic text (2004) -
You gotta preheat the oven before you stick in the turkey.
-
While these cook together for 5 minutes, preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Blog text (32) -
Now preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
-
Preheat the oven to 350.
Fiction book (1993) -
To make the pizza crust: Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Blog text (7) -
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Blog text (18) -
You should preheat the oven to 400 degrees before baking the cookies.
Synonyms
35
2.1
To heat an oven or pan to the right temperature before you cook
1
1.0
Make the oven reach the right temperature before you put food in it
Heat something before you use it
How Hot
50
3.7
7
1.0
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to heat an oven before using it' is directly compositional from 'preheat' (pre- + heat = heat beforehand) plus 'oven', with 'the' as a simple determiner; a B1 learner who knows these parts can readily infer the meaning. This pattern is cross-linguistically common (e.g., Spanish 'precalentar el horno'), so the expression is predictable and transparent.
Etymology
Preheat the oven comes from a simple kitchen step: you turn the oven on and wait until it is hot before you put food inside. That's why it means 'heat an oven to the right temperature before cooking'.