hearth means the place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos, fireplace, oven, smoke hood, or chimney. It carries an Arena rating of 1879, earned across 39 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, hearth ranks #264 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #477 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #1,276 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #1,295 of 17,130 for Most Beautiful Words.
hearth is pronounced /ˈhɑːθ/.
Why “hearth” is a great word
The floor of a fireplace, often extending into a room, which serves as the traditional site for a domestic fire used for heating and cooking. From Middle English herth, herthe, from Old English heorþ, from Proto-West Germanic *herþ, from Proto-Germanic *herþaz ('burning place'), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *kerh₃- ('heat, fire'). Unlike 'fireplace' (which names the architectural structure) or 'home' (which denotes the entire dwelling), the hearth is the specific, grounded thing itself: the warm, cracked stone where the bread is baked, the blackened tiles where ash gathers in soft piles, the firm edge where a child sits to pull on dry socks. It is the small, stubborn center from which all domestic warmth radiates outward, where heat lingers longest after the flames have gone, the way memory does.
Etymology
From Middle English herth, herthe, from Old English heorþ, from Proto-West Germanic *herþ, from Proto-Germanic *herþaz, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *kerh₃- (“heat; fire”). Cognate with West Frisian hurd, Dutch haard, German Herd, Swedish härd. The modern spelling is from an Middle English/Early Modern English /hɛːrθ/, from earlier /heːrθ/, levelled from inflected forms with /rð/ where the vowel would have been lengthened. The reflex of this pronunciation was preserved in obsolete dialectal /ˈhɜɹθ/.
noun
- The place in a home where a fire is or was traditionally kept for home heating and for cooking, usually constituted by at least a hearthstone and often enclosed to varying degrees by any combination of reredos, fireplace, oven, smoke hood, or chimney.e.g.“For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit: […]” — 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XX”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 33:
- A hearthstone, either as standalone or as the floor of an enclosed fireplace or oven.e.g.“cooking on an open hearth”
- A fireplace: an open recess in a wall at the base of a chimney where a fire may be built.
- The lowest part of a metallurgical furnace.
- A brazier, chafing dish, or firebox.
- Home or family life.e.g.“To put it simply, he seems to me to be starting out to harm the city, from its very hearth, by setting out to wrong you.” — 2010, Plato, “Euthyphro”, in Christopher Rowe, transl., The Last Days of Socrates, Penguin Books Ltd., →ISBN, line 3a:
- A household or group in some forms of the modern pagan faith Heathenry.e.g.“Asatru is practised all over Northern Europe and also in North America. Like Druidry, it is organized into bodies with sub-groups, the hearths.” — 1996, Vivianne Crowley, Thorsons principles of paganism, page 50:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).