Etymology of "range" for oven

[El_Kabong]

My Google-fu is weak on this one. Does anyone know why kitchen ovens are sometimes called “ranges”?

[Nametag]

@El_Kabong

My Google-fu is weak on this one. Does anyone know why kitchen ovens are sometimes called “ranges”?

From World Wide Words:

The sense is similar to the one we still use in phrases like range of mountains for a set of things all in a row. It derives from the Old French ranc, which may in turn have come from a prehistoric Germanic khrengaz for a circle, from which we also get our word ring. We borrowed the Old French as rank, which we still use in the sense of a set of things in order, as in military or social ranks or a taxi rank, and as range, which shares some senses. Range was first applied in the cooking sense in the fifteenth century; it seems to have been first used for a collection of hearths and ovens set in a row under one chimney, as one might find in the kitchen of a large house serving many people. Gas range, by the way, is an American term: in Britain, we’d talk about a gas stove or a gas cooker, though these usually have ovens included (we do have kitchen range, but only for solid-fuel cookers like the Aga which have a number of cooking positions, including ovens).

[El_Kabong]

Many thanks.

[Cheesesteak]

Just to clarify a bit, a kitchen range is not the same thing as an oven. An oven is a box you put food in to heat. A cooktop is a collection of burners or elements that you set a pan/pot on top of to heat. A range is a single unit that contains both an oven and a cooktop.

[Manduck]

I thought that a range and a cooktop were the same thing, and that the unit that cotains a range and an oven is called a stove.

[Beware_of_Doug]

Go high-end appliance shopping, someplace you get to choose between freestanding, slide-ins, and built-ins. A cooktop is a burner-only installation (no oven down below - obviously not available freestanding). An oven is the thing with the big door, temperature and BAKE/BROIL/OFF knobs, and optional self-cleaning feature. A range combines the two.

A stove is (presumably) something that sits in a corner, can also be used for room heating, and burns wood, coal, or corncobs.