Kettle

Kettle (pronounced ket-l)

(1) A container (historically and still usually made of metal) used to boil liquids or cook foods; a specialized kind of pot with a handle & spout and thus optimized for pouring (in some markets known variously as teakettles, jugs, electric jugs etc).

(2) By extension, a large metal vessel designed to withstand high temperatures, used in various industrial processes such as refining, distilling & brewing (also sometimes referred to as boilers, steamers, vats, vessels or cauldrons).

(3) In geology, as kettle hole, a steep, bowl-shaped hollow in ground once covered by a glacier.  Kettles are believed to form when a block of ice left by a glacier becomes covered by sediments and later melts, leaving a hollow.  They are usually dozens of meters deep and can be dozens of kilometers in diameter, often containing surface water.

(4) In percussion, as kettledrum (or kettle-drum), a large hemispherical brass percussion instrument (one of the timpani) with a drumhead that can be tuned by adjusting its tension.  There was also the now obsolete use of kettledrum to mean “an informal social party at which a light collation is offered, held in the afternoon or early evening”.

(5) In crowd control, a system of UK origin using an enclosed area into which demonstrators or protesters are herded for containment by authorities (usually taking advantage of aspects of the natural or built environment).

(6) To surround and contain demonstrators or protesters in a kettle.

(7) In weightlifting, as kettlebell, a weight consisting of a cast iron ball with a single handle for gripping the weight during exercise.

(8) In ornithology, a group of raptors riding a thermal, especially when migrating.

(9) In the slang of railroads, a steam locomotive

Pre 900: From the Middle English ketel & chetel, from the Old English cetel & ċietel (kettle, cauldron), and possibly influenced by the Old Norse ketill, both from the Proto-Germanic katilaz (kettle, bucket, vessel), of uncertain origin although etymologists find most persuasive the notion of it being a borrowing of the Late Latin catīllus (a small pot), a diminutive of the Classical Latin catinus (a large pot, a vessel for cooking up or serving food”), from the Proto-Italic katino but acknowledge the word may be a Germanic form which became confused with the Latin dring the early Medieval period..  It should thus be compared with the Old English cete (cooking pot), the Old High German chezzi (a kettle, dish, bowl) and the Icelandic kati & ketla (a small boat).  It was cognate with the West Frisian tsjettel (kettle), the Dutch ketel (kettle), the German Kessel (kettle), the Swedish kittel (cauldron) & kittel (kettle), the Gothic katils (kettle) and the Finnish kattila.  There may also be some link with the Russian котёл (kotjól) (boiler, cauldron).  Probably few activities are a common to human cultures as the boiling of water and as the British Empire spread, the word kettle travelled with the colonial administrators, picked up variously by the Brunei Malay (kitil), the Hindi केतली (ketlī), the Gujarati કીટલી (kīṭlī), the Irish citeal, the Maltese kitla and the Zulu igedlela.  Beyond the Empire, the Turks adopted it unaltered (although it appeared also as ketil).  Kettle is a noun & verb, kettled is a verb & adjective and kettling is a verb; the noun plural is plural kettles.

The boiling of water for all sorts of purposes is an activity common to all human societies for thousands of years so the number of sound-formations which referred to pots and urns used for this purpose would have proliferated, thus the uncertainty about some of the development.  The Latin catinus has been linked by some with Ancient Greek forms such as kotylē (bowl, dish) but this remains uncertain and words for many types of vessels were often loanwords.  The fourteenth century adoption in Middle English of an initial “k” is thought perhaps to indicate the influence of the Old Norse cognate ketill and the familiar modern form “tea-kettle” was used as early as 1705.  In percussion, the kettledrum was described as in the 1540s (based wholly on the shape) and in geology the kettlehole (often clipped to “kettle) was first used in 1866 to refer to “a deep circular hollow in a river bed or other eroded area, pothole>, hence “kettle moraine” dating from 1883 and used to describe one characterized by such features.

Lindsay Lohan cooking pasta in London, October 2014.  One hint this is London rather than Los Angeles is the electric kettle to her left, a standard item in a UK kitchen but less common in the US.

In most of the English-speaking world, kettle refers usually to a vessel or appliance used to boil water, the exception being the US where the device never caught on to the same extent and in Australia and New Zealand, it’s common to refer to the electric versions as “jugs”.  Americans do use kettles, but they’re not as widely used as they are in Australia, New Zealand & the UK where their presence in a kitchen is virtually de rigueur.  One reason is said to be that in the US coffee makers & instant hot water dispensers were historically more common, as was the use of tea bags rather than loose-leaves to make tea.  Those Americans who have a kettle actually usually call it a “kettle” although (and there seems to be little specific regionalism associated with this) it may also be called a “hot pot”, “tea kettle” or “water boiler”.

In idiomatic use, the phrase “a watched kettle never boils” has the same meaning as when used with “watched pot” and is a commentary on (1) one’s time management and (2) one’s perception of time under certain circumstances.  The phrase “pot calling the kettle black” is understood only if it’s realized both receptacles used to be heated over open flames and their metal thus became discolored and ultimately blackened by the soot & smoke.  It’s used to convey an accusation of hypocrisy, implying that an accuser is of the same behavior or trait they are criticizing in others.  The now common sense of “a different kettle of fish” is that of something different that to which it erroneously being compared but the original “kettle of fish” dated from circa 1715 and referred to “a complicated and bungled affair” and etymologists note it’s not actually based on fish being cooked in a kettle (although there was a culinary implement called a “fish kettle” for exactly that purpose but there’s no evidence it was used prior to 1790) but is thought to refer to “kettle” as a variant of kittle & kiddle (weir or fence with nets set in rivers or along seacoasts for catching fish), a use dating from the late twelfth century (it appears in the Magna Charta (1215) as the Anglo-Latin kidellus), from the Old French quidel, probably from the Breton kidel (a net at the mouth of a stream).

1974 Suzuki GT750 “Kettle”.  The front twin disc setup was added in 1973 and was one of the first of its kind.

The Suzuki GT750 was produced between 1971-1977 and was an interesting example of the breed of large-capacity two-stroke motorcycles which provided much excitement and not a few fatalities but which fell victim to increasingly stringent emissions standards and the remarkable improvement in the performance, reliability and refinement of the multi-cylinder four-stroke machines.  The GT750 shared with the other three-cylinder Suzukis (GT380 & GT550) the novelty of an unusual 4-into-3 exhaust system (the center exhaust header was bifurcated), the early versions of which featured the additional complexity of what the factory called the Exhaust Coupler Tube System (ECTS; a connecting pipe joining the left & right-side headers) which was designed to improve low-speed torque.  An even more obvious novelty however was that the GT750 was water-cooled, something rarely seen at the time although that meant it missed out on another of Suzuki’s imaginative acronyms, the RAC (ram air cooling) used on the smaller models.  RAC was a simple aluminum scoop which sat atop the cylinder head and was designed to optimize air-flow.  It was the water-cooling of the GT750 which attracted nicknames but, a generation before the internet, the English language tended still to evolve with regional variations so in England it was “the Kettle”, in Australia “the Water Bottle” and in North America “the Water Buffalo”.  Foreign markets also went their own way, the French favoring “la bouillotte” (the hot water bottle) and the West Germans “Wasserbüffel” (water buffalo).

Kettling is now familiar as a method of large-scale crowd control in which the authorities assemble large cordons of police officers which move to contain protesters within a small, contained space, one often chosen because it makes use of the natural or built environment.  Once contained, demonstrators can selectively be detained, released or arrested.  It’s effective but has been controversial because innocent bystanders can be caught in its net and there have been injuries and even deaths.  Despite that, although courts have in some jurisdictions imposed some restrictions on the practice, as a general principle it remains lawful to use in the West.  The idea is essentially the same as the military concept of “pocketing”, the object of which was, rather than to engage the enemy, instead to confine them to a define area in which the only route of escape was under the control of the opposing force.  The Imperial Russian Army actually called this the котёл (kotyol or kotyel) which translated as cauldron or kettle, the idea being that (like a kettle), it was “hot” space with only a narrow aperture (like a spout) through which the pressure could be relieved.

David Low’s (1891-1963) cartoon (Daily Express, 31 July 1936) commenting on one of the many uncertain aspects of British foreign policy in the 1930s; Left to right: Thomas Inskip (1876–1947), John Simon (1873–1954), Philip Cunliffe-Lister (1884–1972), Duff Cooper (1890–1954), Samuel Hoare (1880–1959), Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940), Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; UK prime-minister 1923-1924, 1924-1929 & 1935-1937) & Anthony Eden (1897-1977; UK prime-minister 1955-1957).

Low attached “trademarks” to some of those he drew.  Baldwin was often depicted with a sticking plaster over his lips, an allusion to one of his more infamous statements to the House of Commons in which he said “…my lips are sealed”.  Sir John Simon on this occasion had a kettle boiling on his head, a fair indication of his state of mind at the time.

Low’s techniques have on occasion been borrowed and some cartoonist might one day be tempted to put a boiling kettle on the often hot-looking head of Barnaby Joyce (b 1967; thrice (between local difficulties) deputy prime minister of Australia 2016-2022).