boiler

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

• noun An enclosed vessel in which water is heated and circulated, either as hot water or as steam, for heating or power.
• noun A container, such as a kettle, for boiling liquids.
• noun A storage tank for hot water.

from The Century Dictionary.

• noun A small isolated reef or atoll below water.
• noun A boiler whose cross-section is an oval or an ellipse.
• noun A boiler made up of a number of tubes in which steam is generated; a water-tube boiler.
• noun A person who boils.
• noun A vessel in which anything is boiled.
• noun A strong metallic structure in which steam is generated for driving engines or for other purposes. See steam-boiler.
• noun Something, as a vegetable, that is suitable for boiling.

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

• noun A sunken reef; esp., a coral reef on which the sea breaks heavily.
• noun One who boils.
• noun A vessel in which any thing is boiled.
• noun (Mech.) A strong metallic vessel, usually of wrought iron plates riveted together, or a composite structure variously formed, in which steam is generated for driving engines, or for heating, cooking, or other purposes.
• noun the cylindrical part containing the flues.
• noun plate or rolled iron of about a quarter to a half inch in thickness, used for making boilers and tanks, for covering ships, etc.
• noun one which consists of a single iron cylinder.
• noun are usually single shells containing a small number of large flues, through which the heat either passes from the fire or returns to the chimney, and sometimes containing a fire box inclosed by water.
• noun a boiler which contains an inclosed fire box and a large number of small flues leading to the chimney.
• noun Same as Tubular boiler, below.
• noun a boiler composed of a number of sections, which are usually of small capacity and similar to, and connected with, each other. By multiplication of the sections a boiler of any desired capacity can be built up.
• noun a boiler containing tubes which form flues, and are surrounded by the water contained in the boiler. See Illust. of Steam boiler, under Steam.
• noun See under Tubulous. See Tube, n., 6, and 1st Flue.

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

• noun rare, informal Boilerplate.
• noun An apparatus that generates heat (usually by burning fuel) and uses it to heat circulating water (or sometimes another liquid) in a closed system that is then used for space heating, swimming pool heating, or domestic hot water or industrial processes.
• noun Less commonly, a hot water heater.
• noun A fuel burning apparatus in which water is boiled to produce steam for space heating, power generation, or industrial processes. (more precisely) An apparatus in which a heat source other than a hot liquid or steam (most commonly burning fuel, exhaust gas from an internal combustion engine or gas turbine, waste heat from a process, solar energy or electricity) is used to boil water (or rarely another liquid), under pressure to provide steam (or other gas) for use as a heat source in calorifiers, heat exchangers or heat emitters, or for use directly for humidification, in an industrial process, or to power steam turbines.
• noun A kitchen vessel for steaming or boiling food.

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

• noun sealed vessel where water is converted to steam
• noun a metal pot for stewing or boiling; usually has a lid