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1 : a place (such as a room) with cooking facilities
2 : the personnel that prepares, cooks, and serves food
Did You Know?
Although a room where food is cooked is called a kitchen, the words cook and kitchen are so different that it is surprising to learn that they both come from the same source. Both words can be traced to the Latin verb coquere, meaning “to cook.” The connection between coquere and cook is easy to see, but kitchen has a more involved history. From the verb coquere came the later Latin noun coquina, meaning “a kitchen.” With some changes in pronunciation, coquina came into Old English as cycene. This became Middle English kichene and finally modern English kitchen.
Examples of kitchen in a Sentence
They want a house with a large kitchen.
Sierra Newton, Cincinnati.com, “Coronavirus in Ohio: Kindness, levity in chaos – mud puddles, Saturday Hoops, boosts up,” 23 Mar. 2020 Rolling meatballs is a bit time consuming, but also a good reason to pull a kid into the kitchen to help you with this (wash hands thoroughly with warm soapy water before and after).
Katie Workman, NBC News, “Make Sunday dinner festive with these buffalo chicken meatballs,” 21 Mar. 2020 Factories can still produce goods at a lower pace, and restaurants can keep their kitchens open, even if their dining halls are closed to customers.
Luiz Romero, Quartz, “Italian delivery workers want people to stop ordering stuff they don’t need,” 19 Mar. 2020 Separating the two eliminated the couple’s biggest pain point in their old kitchen: stepping all over each other while trying to prepare meals simultaneously.
Hadley Keller, House Beautiful, “A Designer Makes the Case for Separating Your Fridge and Freezer,” 18 Mar. 2020 Thinking about his plans for the year, Clemens walked with his laptop into the kitchen to make a snack.
Emily Witt, The New Yorker, “Telfar Clemens’s Mass Appeal,” 9 Mar. 2020 The big takeaway Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies.
Jennifer Hayes, National Geographic, “Are you one of our 132 million Instagram followers?,” 6 Mar. 2020 Plus, the best seats in the house are at the corner of the bar, where you’ll be served more efficiently and can watch people cook through a window into the kitchen.
Soleil Ho, SFChronicle.com, “Soulful pastas to sing about at Oakland’s Belotti Ristorante,” 5 Mar. 2020 As Polk, who was unarmed, continued inside the home, Epps followed and turned into the kitchen, Gul said.
Evan Sernoffsky, San Francisco Chronicle, “Did Kevin Epps kill in self-defense?,” 21 Feb. 2020
These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word ‘kitchen.’ Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
First Known Use of kitchen
before the 12th century, in the meaning defined at sense 1
History and Etymology for kitchen
Middle English kichene, from Old English cycene, from Late Latin coquina, from Latin coquere to cook — more at cook
Learn More about kitchen
Cite this Entry
“Kitchen.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/kitchen. Accessed 28 Mar. 2020.
More Definitions for kitchen
Kids Definition of kitchen
: a room in which food is prepared and cooking is done
Comments on kitchen
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