sawdust stove
- noun
- Many rural families rely on a sawdust stove to keep their homes warm during the winter.
Examples
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He built a sawdust stove using scrap metal and old bricks for his workshop.
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Using a sawdust stove is an economical way to reduce heating costs.
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The sawdust stove is very efficient.
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He built a sawdust stove for camping.
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He built a sawdust stove using scraps from his workshop to save money on heating.
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Many rural families use a sawdust stove because it's inexpensive and easy to make.
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A sawdust stove can provide warmth and reduce energy bills during the cold months.
Synonyms
A kitchen appliance with hot burners used to cook food
A stove that burns wood to heat a room or cook food
A device that burns wood or coal to cook food
A stove that controls the air so the fuel gives heat for many hours
A small stove that burns charcoal for heat or cooking
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning of 'sawdust stove' is directly compositional: 'sawdust' specifies the material/fuel and 'stove' denotes the heating appliance, so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer it is a stove that uses or burns sawdust. This noun–noun compounding pattern is regular in English and cross-linguistically common, so it is immediately understandable rather than idiomatic.
Etymology
Sawdust stove comes from a simple, literal image: a stove made to burn loose sawdust as 'fuel'. People often built these from scrap metal or old bricks, so the phrase now means 'a simple, cheap stove that uses sawdust to heat a place'.