[boiling the kettle]

[Paul Frank]

"Let us put it into the fire!" said the other boy, "it will help to boil the
kettle."
        Oscar Wilde, "The Remarkable Rocket," in The Happy Prince and Other
Tales, D. Nutt, 1910, p. 114.

At the next camp I had another of the dogs killed. It was now exactly six
weeks since we left the Roosevelt, and I felt as if the goal were in sight.
I intended the next day, weather and ice permitting, to make a long march,
"boil the kettle" midway, and then go on again without sleep, trying to make
up the 5 miles which we had lost on the third of April.
        Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Olive Rathbun Wilcox, Great Adventures and
Explorations from the Earliest Times to the Present, as Told by the
Explorers Themselves, Dial Press, 1952, p. 612.

In 'English Prose' she has robbed culture not only of its male origins but
also of its princely pretensions, for she sees prose as Cinderella, occupied
with 'menial tasks'. She has to do all the work of the house; to make the
beds, dust the china, boil the kettle, sweep the floors.'
        Jane Marcus, New Feminist Essays on Virginia Woolf, University of
Nebraska Press, 1981, p. 17.

"A virgin who has been educated to make monoodahs and birch dishes, to lace
snowshoes, and make Indian shoes, to string wampum belts, sew birch canoes,
and boil the kettle is esteemed as a lady of fine accomplishments"
        Pauline Turner Strong, Captive Selves, Captivating Others: The
Politics and Poetics of Colonial American Captivity Narratives, Westview
Press, 1999, p. 168.

If A turned on the burner in order to boil the kettle, what is causally
relevant about his wanting is that it was his wanting this kettle to boil,
what is causally relevant about his believing is that it was his believing
that his turning on of this burner would lead to this kettle's boiling, and
it is causally relevant that the subject of this belief is his turning on of
this burner, while the performance of which all this is the explanatory
cause is seen by A as his turning on of this burner.
        J. L. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation, OUP,
1980, 286

Traffic jams are an excuse to boil the kettle or tie up outside one of the
pubs that always seems to come into view when you weigh anchor from another.
        Newspaper article by Gill Williams; The Mirror, February 19, 2000

Unfortunately she deteriorated so much and started wandering at night, or
trying to boil the kettle without lighting the gas. And her disposition,
which had never been sweet, became something unbearable. I was at breaking
point.
        Newspaper article; Birmingham Evening Mail, September 21, 1999

We are having to boil the kettle several times just to have a wash in hot
water. Some, such as the old and those with kids, are in an even worse state
than me.
        Newspaper article; Birmingham Evening Mail, January 11, 2001

TV is different, and it's well known that electricity demand surges during
ad breaks and between programmes as viewers leap up to boil the kettle.
        Cape Argus (South Africa), July 1, 2005

Paul
______________________
Paul Frank
Chinese-English translator
paulfrank at post.harvard.edu