stoker

Etymology

It is borrowed from Dutch stoker,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} an agent noun from stoken (“to feed a fire, stoke”),^[2][3][7] from Middle Dutch stōken (“to push, poke, thrust”),^[8][3][9] also Middle Low German stoken.^[5][4] The Middle Dutch verb is related to stoc (“stick, stump”),^[8][3] and so to English stock and stick.^{[3][5][9][10]} The verb stoke is a back-formation from stoker, first implied in stoking-hole in 1683.^[8][5][3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who feeds and tends a furnace: 1660, in a broadside lament.^[2][7] Etymonline dates the word to the 1650s.^[3]

Semantic evolution

According to Skeat, the word at first meant a man who looked after the fire in a brewhouse, as Phillips's dictionary defined it.^[10] The figurative use, one who keeps something burning, is recorded from 1737.^[2] With the steam age the stoker became above all the man who fed the boilers of a steamship or a locomotive.^[7][6] From 1884 a mechanical stoker was a machine that fed fuel into a furnace automatically.^[2] From 1899 sailors also called the gritty specks of soot from a steamer's funnel stokers.^[2]

Timeline

• 1660 – a person who feeds and tends a furnace.^[2][7]
• 1737 – figurative use.^[2]
• 1884 – mechanical stoker, a machine that feeds a furnace.^[2]
• 1899 – plural, gritty particles of soot from a steamer's funnel.^[2]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who tends a furnace and keeps it supplied with fuel, especially on a steamship.^[6][7][2]
2. (British) A fireman on a steam locomotive.^[7]
3. A machine that feeds fuel into a furnace automatically.^[7][2]

Word family

• stokerless

Related words

• stoke
• stock
• stick

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 Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
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 c d Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
7. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
9. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
10. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press