Definition of "teakettle"

teakettle

noun
plural teakettles
1. (dated outside US) A vessel used to boil water for tea or other hot beverages.
  Quotations
  Phœbe and the fire that boiled the teakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices.
  1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields
  “Such a cunning teakettle and saucepan, and a tete-a-tete set, and lots of good things to eat. Do have toast for tea, Polly, and let me make it with the new toasting fork; it's such fun to play cook.”
  1869–1870, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter VIII, in An Old-Fashioned Girl, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1870
verb
third-person singular simple present teakettles, present participle teakettling, simple past and past participle teakettled
1. (intransitive, rare) To make a shrill sound like a boiling teakettle.
  Quotations
  The Carolina wrens love it too, and they were teakettling away around me.
  2006, Tim Traver, Sippewissett, Or, Life on a Salt Marsh, page 46
  They'd been running hard and the only thing he could hear was his own heart pounding and his breath teakettling in and out of his lungs.
  2011, Joe Schreiber, The Unholy Cause