boiler

Etymology

It is formed from English boil + -er,^[2][3][4][5] an agent noun from the verb.^[6] The verb came into Middle English from Anglo-Norman boillir, also buillir,^[3] Old French bolir, from Latin bulliō (“to bubble, seethe”).^[6]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who boils something: about 1540, in the ordinances of the royal household.^[2][3] The Shorter Oxford dates this sense to Middle English,^[4] and Dictionary.com dates the word to 1530–40.^[5]

Semantic evolution

Johnson (1755) gave both senses, the person that boils and the vessel in which anything is boiled.^[7] The OED records the vessel from 1591 (Etymonline 1725),^[2][6] and the strong tank that makes steam under pressure to drive an engine from 1735 (Etymonline 1757).^[2][6] In the 19th century the word was used of a metal tub for washing clothes at a high temperature (1816), of the appliance that heats water for central heating (1818), and of a fowl or vegetable suited only to boiling (1812).^[2][8] American colloquial English had to burst one's boiler, to come to grief, from 1824.^[2] From 1962, in British and later Australian slang, an old boiler is an unattractive woman, especially an elderly one;^[2][9] Tréguer explains that the reference is to a tough old chicken fit only for boiling, as opposed to a young roaster.^[10] Slang also used boiler for the stomach, from 1899.^[9] Bunny boiler, an obsessive former lover, alludes to a scene in the film Fatal Attraction (1987).^[11] In dialect a boiler was a large kettle or a saucepan in Scotland, Yorkshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and in Cheshire a salt-maker;^[12] in the American South it is an iron cooking pot.^[13] In Canada it is a stretch of seething water in rapids or below a waterfall,^[14] and in the West Indies and Bermuda a sunken coral reef on which the sea breaks (1909).^[2]

Timeline

• c. 1540 – a person who boils something.^[2][3]
• 1591 – a vessel in which a liquid is boiled.^[2]
• 1735 – a tank making steam to drive an engine.^[2]
• 1812 – a vegetable or fowl suited to boiling.^[2]
• 1816 – a tub for washing clothes.^[2]
• 1818 – a central-heating appliance.^[2]
• 1824 – to burst one's boiler (US colloquial).^[2]
• 1890 – verb, to fit a steamship with boilers.^[2]
• 1962 – slang, an unattractive older woman.^[2][9]

Modern meaning

Noun

1. An appliance that burns fuel to heat water for a central heating system and a hot-water supply.
2. A strong closed tank in which water is turned into steam under pressure to drive an engine.
3. A vessel, such as a kettle, for boiling liquids.
4. A tank in which hot water is stored.
5. A fowl or vegetable suitable only for cooking by boiling.
6. (slang, offensive) old boiler: an unattractive middle-aged or elderly woman.
7. A person who boils something, as in a manufacturing process.

Word family

• boilerless
• boilermaker
• boilerplate
• boiler room
• double boiler

Related words

• boil
• potboiler

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
8. ^ Moore, Bruce, ed. (2004), The Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2nd ed., Melbourne: Oxford University Press
9. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
10. ^ Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "‘old boiler’: meaning and origin", 18 September 2024
11. ^ Tréguer, Pascal, Word Histories, wordhistories.net, p. "meaning and origin of the term ‘bunny boiler’", 15 March 2019
12. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
13. ^ Cassidy, Frederic G. & Joan Houston Hall (eds.) (1985–2002), Dictionary of American Regional English, vols I–IV, Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
14. ^ Dollinger, Stefan, ed., A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles, 3rd ed. (online), Vancouver: University of British Columbia, dchp.arts.ubc.ca