Calefact

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To make warm or to apply heat to something
2. To provide warmth or heat to a person or object
3. To warm up or increase the temperature of something

Etymology: "Calefact" is a rare English word, borrowed directly from the Latin "calefacere," meaning "to make warm" or "to heat." It is built from "calere" ("to be warm") and "facere" ("to make" or "to do"), the same "-facere" that gives English words such as "factory" and "manufacture." Its English use is largely confined to the seventeenth century and later, when writers working in natural philosophy and medicine needed a term for something that produces or conveys heat. It is most often found in older scientific and medical writing, and it survives mainly in dictionaries and in the work of historians of science.