Also 8 stoak. [Back-formation from STOKER.]
1. trans. To feed, stir up, and poke the fire in (a furnace), to tend the furnace of (a boiler). Also with up.
1683, etc. [? Implied in STOKING vbl. sb.2 c].
1735. Dyche & Pardon, Dict., Stoak or Stoke v. to stir up, rake, cook, feed and look after a great Fire, such as Brewers, Distillers, Glass-houses, &c. use.
1838. Holloway, Prov. Dict., To stoke, to stir the fire.
1864. Reader, 2 July, 9. Who shall stoke the furnace of the steamship?
1883. M. P. Bale, Saw-Mills, 224. In stoking Cornish or Lancashire boilers by hand three systems of firing are in vogue.
1909. G. M. Trevelyan, Garibaldi & the Thousand, xi. 202. First the fires had to be lit and stoked.
absol. 1867–72. N. P. Burgh, Marine Engin. (1881), 375. Stoke freely when under steam.
1892. Black & White, 16 Jan., 76/1. The German ships had been stoking up.
b. fig.
1837. Hood, Ode to R. Wilson, 391. Sufficiently by stern necessitarians Poor Nature, with her face begrim’d by dust, Is stok’d, cok’d, smok’d, and almost chok’d.
1882. Beresf. Hope, Brandreths, III. xxxix. 95. It [a prize fight] was stoked by an Irish adventurer who [etc.].
1915. [W. H. L. Watson], in Blackw. Mag., Aug., 264–5. Neither the British nor the German soldier … has been able to stoke up that virulent hate.
2. transf. (jocular). To feed (oneself or another) as if stoking a furnace; to ‘shovel’ (food) into one’s mouth steadily and continuously.
1882. Pall Mall Gaz., 12 July, 2/2. Mr. Warton vigorously stoked himself with snuff in the exuberance of his delight.
1894. Sala, London up to Date, 34. He eats, or, rather, he ‘stokes’ his meal, till the veins in his forehead swell.
1897. Miss Broughton, Dear Faustina, xv. The denizens of this A. B. C. … are stoking themselves stolidly.
1900. Kipling, in Daily Mail, 25 April, 4/4. So they stoked them—‘the ’arf that ’adn’t the use of their ’ands’—and they re-dressed their bandages.
1915. ‘Q.’ (Quiller-Couch), in Blackw. Mag., May, 686/1. There’s folks … as can’t stoke hot tea upon sossiges.
absol. 1882. Besant, All Sorts, xvii. Dinner in the middle of the day, of course…. At the East End everybody stokes at one.
1897. Kipling, Captains Courageous, ii. 41. Then they stoked in silence till Dan drew breath over his tin cup and despanded of Harvey how he felt. ‘Most full.’
3. In combination, as stoke-hearth, -house.
1839. Ure, Dict. Arts, 1248. The stoke-hearth [of a smelting furnace].
1903. Westm. Gaz., 27 Jan., 7/1. It was heated by means of hot-water pipes, fed from a stoke-house.
Hence Stoked ppl. a.
1902. Daily Chron., 2 May, 6/1. Hand-stoked retorts were shut down, and now the whole of the gas is to be manufactured in inclined or mechanically stoked retorts.
