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What do you call the circles on the stovetop that you cook on?


Pegasus
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I would make this a poll but I'd also like to know where you grew up.  DD and I have been discussing the various terms we've heard  and speculating on the regional differences.

 

Also, do you call them different terms if it is an electric versus gas?

 

Thanks!

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The burners, no matter what. And here in NYC electric stoves are comparatively rare. All our houses and apartments were hooked up for gas before electric became common, and so nobody ever bothered to rip them out.

 

Which was a real gift after Hurricane Sandy in some places where the power was out for a long time, let me tell you! Being able to cook on your stove even when there are no lights is definitely nothing to sneeze at.

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I grew up in the southeastern U.S., using a stove with the old fashioned electric coil burners. We always called them "eyes."

 

As an adult living elsewhere, I continued to call them eyes as long as I had that type of stove. Then I had gas ones and called them burners. Then I had the flat electric ones (which I HATE, btw, they don't get hot enough and I can't keep them clean) and I never know what to call them. It's usually "the eyes, burners, whatever you call those things."

 

I just noticed in my first sentence that apparently I've started calling the electric coil ones burners as well.

 

Total side note: That's one of the hazards of living in a lot of different places and being exposed to lots of different dialects and languages ... sometimes one word comes out naturally in one environment but a different word in another environment, or the word that comes out most naturally isn't even your native language (if it's something that there is an English word for but I didn't experience much until I was in a non-English speaking country and I just used the local word for it--for me, a prime example is a traffic circle or roundabout; sometimes I use those words, but the most natural one is the Arabic "midan") or two or more words try to come out at the same time and I just stop, confused, while I figure out which one to say.

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Burners;   West Coast and Midwest.  I don't think I've ever heard anything else! 

 

I have heard people say "elements" when they're referring to the actual part that produces the heat -- for example, if they're saying "something is wrong with the heating element."  But they wouldn't say "Put the pan on the element."  They'd still say "Put the pan on the burner."

 

 

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