hot water can

plural hot water cans · alternative hot-water can · alternative hotwater can

1. historicalA can (often with a spout and handle) filled with hot water, used to warm a room, to keep one's feet warm, or to supply water for such things as shaving, washing, etc.

   The rest of us were glad to creep between blankets, with a mountain of covers on top, and a hot water can inside. What a tale to tell of balmy Florida!

   1889, Helen Harcourt, chapter 11, in Home Life in Florida, Louisville, Kentucky: John P. Morton, page 178

   4 more examples

   1899, “Australian Prison Discipline,” condensed from an article in Colonial Empire, Shanghai, in Public Opinion, New York, Volume 26, No. 6, p. 174, A third warder proceeds along the doors with a hot water can, and each prisoner who by good conduct has earned the privilege of tea and sugar is supplied with the water to make his tea.

   “Oh, dear Miss Honeychurch, you will catch a chill! And Mr. Beebe here besides. Who would suppose this is Italy? There is my sister actually nursing the hot-water can; no comforts or proper provisions.”

   1908, E. M. Forster, A Room with a View, Part 1, Chapter 3, p. 50

   After weary waiting at Plymouth they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to carry them another stage on their journey. Hot-water cans put in at Plymouth mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment.

   1910, William J. Locke, A Christmas Mystery, New York: John Lane, page 28

   Anyhow, here I am […] quite in the mood to revisit one of those Queen Anne country houses where I awoke on the morning after a dance and drowsily observed the discreet man-servant putting a hot-water can into the hip-bath, wondering whether he was expecting me to give him half-a-sovereign or whether five bob would be decent […]

   1942, Siegfried Sassoon, chapter 3, in The Weald of Youth, London: Faber & Faber, published 1943, page 44