kettle
/ˈkɛt(ə)l
/- As a toddler, he was badly scalded after pulling a kettle of boiling water over himself.
- I put it in a large mixing bowl with a capful of detergent and poured boiling water from a kettle onto the square.
- One of the activists inside the kettle said: "I'm here because the public sector is getting cut. The people who are getting hurt are the poorest in the country."
- When the police resorted to kettling tactics during last year's student protests, they didn't offer such facilities to those trapped inside the kettle.
- The sight from inside the kettle was of a cordon of riot police several deep.
- The demonstration was to begin at noon but even before all the protesters had gathered the police suddenly swooped in and kettled them.
- I hoped to make it a lot more difficult for the police to kettle children but I am at least pleased that the judges have clarified that the welfare of young people should be made a priority.
- Witnesses say a section of the crowd were ushered from Parliament Square on to Westminster Bridge before being kettled for around three hours until they were released.
Phrases
a different kettle of fish
the pot calling the kettle black
a pretty (or fine) kettle of fish
Derivatives
kettleful
/ noun (plural kettlefuls) ...- Boil one kettleful of water and pour into peanut paste while it's still on the heat and blend well.
- Sri poured tea from the last kettleful that Eko had prepared that morning.
Origin
Old English cetel, cietel, of Germanic origin, based on Latin catillus, diminutive of catinus 'deep container for cooking or serving food'. In Middle English the word's form was influenced by Old Norse ketill.
Originally a kettle was any container used to heat water over a fire. There may be a clue as to how a pretty kettle of fish, where the pretty is ironical, developed in a travel book of the 1790s. This describes ‘a kettle of fish’ as a term used in Berwick-upon-Tweed for a high-society picnic where freshly caught salmon were cooked in kettles on the banks of the River Tweed. Kettle goes back to Latin catinus ‘a deep container for cooking or serving food’. The first example of the pot calling the kettle black, meaning that a person's criticisms of another could equally well apply to themselves, dates from 1693.
Rhymes
- cultural lag
- cultural landscape
- cultural literacy
- culturally
- cultural materialism
- cultural nationalism
- cultural nationalist
- cultural park
- cultural property
- cultural relativism
- cultural relativist
- cultural relativity
- Cultural Revolution
- cultural safety
- cultural studies
- cultural terrorism
- cultural terrorist
- cultural warrior
- culturati
- culturation
- culture
- culture-bound
- culture center
- culture centre
- culture clash