Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A kiln for drying hops or malt or drying and curing tobacco.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A kiln to dry hops or malt. See cut in preceding column.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A kiln to dry hops or malt; a cockle.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun UK a kiln for drying tobacco, malt and especially hops

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a kiln for drying hops

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English ost, from Old English āst.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English ost, Anglos Saxon ast a kiln, Latin aedes a hearth or house

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Examples

  • Hop to It bines, oast Hops grow on 20-foot-long plants called bines that climb a trellis of twine and wire strung from tall poles.

    Week in Words Erin McKean 2011

  • The plants produce cone-like flowers that are picked at the end of summer and dried in an oast—a kiln-heated barn that traditionally had pointed turrets with air vents on top.

    Week in Words Erin McKean 2011

  • Bine is derived from "bind" the flexible stem of a plant rather than "vine"; oast may be related to an Indo-European word for "fire."

    Week in Words Erin McKean 2011

  • In Kent, it is oast houses topped with white cowls and weather vanes.

    A working life: The winemaker 2010

  • The archive includes some of his earliest writings, including a wonky drawing of an oast house made when he was 10, carefully labelled "from Siegfried for Mamsy".

    Siegfried Sassoon archive goes on show at Cambridge 2010

  • Not your typical Rowland Hilder either ... quite often purchased as a 'Boots' print and featuring tip-carts, mangold wurzles, oast houses and wintery trees they're even disappearing from the car boot sales as the 'ironic decor' set pick up prints of The Green Girl along with the quintessentially English RH.

    A Drive in the Country Peter Ashley 2008

  • I find the choice of a trio of Kent oast houses in the background interesting; this was a time when these vernacular buildings in the landscape would have typified the country life being sort after by the post war newly well-off.

    Blimey O' Riley Peter Ashley 2008

  • This is, I realize, the chestnut-harvesting equivalent of a Kentish oast house: a miniature chestnut-drying house, a secadou.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • This is, I realize, the chestnut-harvesting equivalent of a Kentish oast house: a miniature chestnut-drying house, a secadou.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • The BBC has morphed in the oast few days into the Hamas Broadcasting Corporation, wilfully spinning events to suit their Gazan soul-mates.

    Archive 2009-01-04 2009

Comments

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  • a usually conical kiln used for drying hops, malt, or tobacco -- called also oast·house.

    April 24, 2007

  • Is that where hopscotch comes from? ;-)

    July 7, 2008

  • First you've gotta cotch 'em.

    July 7, 2008