Definitions

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

  • noun The area or compartment into which a ship's furnaces or boilers open.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The space below the decks of a steam-vessel where the boilers are located and fired; a stoke-hole.

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

  • noun (Naut.) The space, or any of the spaces, in front of the boilers of a ship, from which the furnaces are fed; the stokehole of a ship; also, a room containing a ship's boilers; ; -- called also, in American ships, fireroom.

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

  • noun nautical a chamber where a ship's furnaces are stoked.

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

  • noun (nautical) chamber or compartment in which the furnaces of a ship are stoked or fired

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The shells … bored their way even to the stokehold.

    Castles of Steel Massie, Robert K., 1929- 2003

  • From which you may gather that a busy day among the Borneo pirates had quite dissipated the conscientious lunacy which had temporarily come over me in the stokehold the previous night.

    Flashman's Lady Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1977

  • But Elspeth ... and to haunt me in that stinking stokehold came the appalling question: suppose it was my skin or hers - would I turn tail then?

    Flashman's Lady Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1977

  • There was some difficulty in recruiting a sufficient number of engineer officers, and of stokers who could manage the novel tubular boilers of the new battleships, and the fleet was undoubtedly handicapped by the inexperience of its engine-room and stokehold staff.

    Famous Sea Fights From Salamis to Tsu-Shima John Richard Hale

  • Forced draught is produced by twelve 5 ft. 6 in. fans, three being stationed in each stokehold.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 Various

  • Yarrow's patent water tight ash pans are fitted to each boiler, to prevent the fire being extinguished by a sudden influx of water into the stokehold.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 Various

  • Mr. Thornycroft has for some years used the locomotive form of boiler for his steam launches, working them under an air pressure -- produced by a fan discharging into a close stokehold -- of from 1 in. to 6 in. of water, as may be required.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 299, September 24, 1881 Various

  • The firemen and other engine room and stokehold workers are located in rooms above the machinery with separate entrances and exits to and from their work.

    Marvels of Modern Science Paul Severing

  • So were all hands on board, when the news spread through the ship; and, on our reaching Mombassa late in the afternoon of the same day, steaming fifteen knots all the way, pretty nearly our full speed when the stokehold was not ` closed up, 'we found the _Merlin_ there before us, as the man on deck had told Larry and me in the morning.

    Young Tom Bowling The Boys of the British Navy John B. [Illustrator] Greene

  • How could she overlook treatment which would have caused comment in the stokehold of a cattle ship?

    The Clicking of Cuthbert 1928

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  • Irritated voices were ascending through the skylight and through the fiddle of the stokehold in a harsh and resonant uproar, mingled with angry clangs and scrapes of metal, as if men with limbs of iron and throats of bronze had been quarrelling down there.

    - Conrad, Typhoon

    March 26, 2008