HEARTH (a word which appears in various forms in several

See also:

• TEUTONIC
• TEUTONIC (GERMANIC) LANGUAGES

Teutonic

See also:

• LANGUAGES

languages, cf. Dutch haard,

See also:

• GERMAN
• GERMAN, DUTCH AND SCANDINAVIAN

German

See also:

• HERD (a word common to Teutonic languages; the O. Eng. form was heord; cf. Ger. Herde, Swed. and Dan. hjord; the Sans. ca'rdhas, which shows the pre-Teutonic form, means a troop)

Herd, in the sense of "

See also:

• FLOOR (from O. Eng. flor, a word common to many Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch vloer, and Ger. Flur, a field, in the feminine, and a floor, masculine)

floor ")  , the part of a room where a fire is made, usually 'onstructed of stone, bricks, tiles or earth, beaten hard and having a chimney above; the fire being lighted either on the hearth itself, or in a receptacle placed there for the purpose . Like the Latin focus, especially in the phrase for " hearth and home " answering to pro aris et focis, the word is used as equivalent to the home or household . The word is also applied to the fire and cooking apparatus on board ship; the floor of a smith's fdrge; the floor of a reverberatory furnace on which the ore is exposed to the flame; the lower part of a blast furnace through which the metal goes down into the crucible; in soldering, a portable brazier or chafing dish, and an iron box sunk in the middle of a flat iron plate or table . An " open-hearth furnace " is a regenerative furnace of the reverberatory type used in making steel, hence "open-hearth steel" (see IRON AND STEEL) . Hearth-money, hearth tax or chimney-money, was a tax imposed in England on all houses except cottages at a rate of two shillings for every hearth . It was first levied in 1662, but owing to its unpopularity, chiefly caused by the domiciliary visits of the collectors, it was repealed in 1689, although it was producing £170,000 a year . The principle of the tax was not new in the history of taxation, for in Anglo-Saxon times the king derived a part of his revenue from a fumage or tax of smoke farthings levied on all hearths except those of the poor . It appears also in the hearth-penny or tax of a penny on every hearth, which as early as the loth century was paid annually to the pope (see PETER'S PENCE) .