kitchen

IPA/ˈkɪtʃɪn/
KK[kˈɪtʃən]IPA/ˈkɪtʃɪn/

kitchen — noun

  • kitchensingular
  • kitchensplural

1. a room in a house or restaurant for storing food, cooking meals, and washing dis

1.nounA1
Definition

a room in a house or restaurant for storing food, cooking meals, and washing dishes and kitchen tools afterward

Example

Tuan washed all the dishes in the kitchen after dinner.

in the kitchen — location preposition

There is a big fridge and a white table in our kitchen.

Common collocations
  • big kitchen
  • small kitchen
  • clean the kitchen
  • kitchen table
  • kitchen sink
  • kitchen floor
  • kitchen knife
  • in the kitchen
  • cook in the kitchen
  • eat in the kitchen

Grammar Patterns

a/the kitchen

in the kitchen

kitchen + noun

Common Mistakes

She is kitchening dinner.
She is cooking dinner in the kitchen.
'kitchen' is a noun (a room), not a verb.
I put the food in the cooker.' (meaning the room).
I put the food in the kitchen.
'cooker' is the machine for cooking; 'kitchen' is the room.
Idioms

everything but the kitchen sink

idiom

a very large number of things, especially more than is needed or expected

When the Wang family moved house, they packed everything but the kitchen sink into the truck.

My aunt brought everything but the kitchen sink to the picnic — chairs, tables, umbrellas, and three coolers.

if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

idiom

used to tell someone that if they cannot handle the pressure of a situation, they should leave it for someone else

The new manager keeps complaining about the long hours, so her boss told her, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

if you can’t stand the heat (get out of the kitchen)

idiom

This saying means that if a task is too hard for you, you should stop doing it instead of complaining.

When Maya complained about the long hours, her boss said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Diego knew the project was tough, but he remembered the saying about the heat and the kitchen.

Word family

Synonym discussion

Sense: noun/1

Kitchen, cooker, and cook look similar in spelling but refer to completely different things. A kitchen is the room itself — the space where you prepare and cook meals. A cooker is a machine inside the kitchen that has an oven and hot plates to heat and cook food. A cook is a person who prepares food, or the action of making a meal (verb). For example: 'I cook dinner in the kitchen using the cooker.' A good way to remember: a room (kitchen), a machine (cooker), a person or action (cook).

kitchen ↗cooker ↗cook ↗

Common collocations

Nouns

  • kitchen table
  • kitchen sink
  • kitchen knife
  • kitchen floor
  • kitchen door
  • kitchen cabinet
  • kitchen window

Phrases

  • kitchen and dining room
  • kitchen and bathroom

Prepositions

  • in the kitchen
  • into the kitchen
  • out of the kitchen
  • through the kitchen

Etymology

LatinOld EnglishEnglish

Kitchen traces back through Old English (cycene) to Latin (coquina, meaning 'a place for cooking'), which comes from the Latin verb coquere ('to cook'). The word has been used for over a thousand years to mean the room where people prepare meals.