kettle

plural kettles

1. cookingA vessel for boiling a liquid or cooking food, usually metal and equipped with a lid.

   There's a hot kettle of soup on the stove.

   1 more example

   To cook pasta, you first need to put the kettle on.

2. The quantity held by a kettle.
3. A vessel or appliance used to boil water for the preparation of hot beverages and other foodstuffs.

   Stick the kettle on and we'll have a nice cup of tea.

   Synonyms: teakettle

4. geographyA kettle hole, sometimes any pothole.
5. collectivebiologyA group of raptors swirling and spiraling upward as they ride a thermal, especially when migrating.

   a kettle of hawks

   4 more examples

   Kettles can consist of thousands of birds migrating together.

   2010, Jean-Luc E. Cartron, Raptors of New Mexico

   the "River of Raptors" - an enormous kettle of hawks - circles over Cardel, in Veracruz, Mexico, in early October

   2012, Pete Dunne, David Sibley, Clay Sutton, Hawks in Flight, HarperCollins

   then a pure Swainsons's hawk kettle of about 50 birds

   1996, Clay Sutton, Patricia Sutton, How to Spot Hawks and Eagles, Houghton Mifflin, page 30

   When one hawk discovers a thermal, others notice its spiraling flight and join it, not out of any sense of sociability but because rising on a thermal and gliding to the next saves the energy of flapping on a long flight. Groups of hawks all spiraling on the same thermal are called kettles.

   2012, Laur Erickson, Betsy Bowen, Hawk Ridge, University of Minnesota Press, page 3

6. slangrail transportA steam locomotive.
7. entertainmentA kettledrum.
8. An instance of kettling; a group of protesters or rioters confined in a limited area.
9. slangA watch (timepiece).
10. A bucket for holding a quantity of paint during the painting process.
11. governmentA type of encirclement.

    Near-synonym: cauldron

    Synonyms: cauldron

12. abbreviationellipsisfigurativelyEllipsis of kettle of fish.

    Well, we're really in a kettle now, aren't we?

    1 more example

    Near-synonyms: cauldron, pickle; see also Thesaurus:difficult situation

    Synonyms: cauldron, pickle, ass in a sling, bind, bucket of syrup, calvary, cauldron, cross

present singular third person kettles · participle present kettling · participle past kettled · past kettled

1. To contain demonstrators in a confined area.

   A couple of the initial pepper spray incidents went viral on YouTube, one showing very young women screaming hysterically while penned—or is the term for this ‘kettled’?—by bright orange police mesh.

   2011 October 12, Gregory Djerejian, “This Ain't No Tea Party: A Conservative Defense of Occupy Wall Street”, in The Atlantic

   1 more example

   Life for senior officers has been made much easier by the use of counter-terrorism powers, which enable them to contain demonstrators for hours in a confined spot. This tactic, known as kettling, is seen by some as an attempt to prevent people lawfully demonstrating.

   2009 April 2, John O'Connor, “G20: The upside of kettling: The Guardian”, in The Guardian

2. intransitiveOf a boiler: to make a whistling sound like the boiling of a kettle, indicative of various types of fault.

plural kettles

1. alternativeAlternative form of kiddle (“kind of fishweir”).

plural Kettles · alternative Kettell

1. countableuncountableA surname.
2. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Cumberland County, Kentucky, United States, named after a creek.
3. countableuncountableAn unincorporated community in Roane County, West Virginia, United States, named after a summit.
4. countableuncountableSynonym of Kingskettle, Fife, Scotland.

   Synonyms: Kingskettle, Fife, Scotland