A vessel used to boil water for tea or other hot beverages.
Dated outside US
Phœbe and the fire that boiled the teakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices.1851 April 9, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC:
“Such a cunning teakettle and saucepan, and a tete-a-tete set, and lots of good things to eat. Do have toast for tea, Polly, and let me make it with the new toasting fork; it's such fun to play cook.”1869–1870, Louisa M[ay] Alcott, chapter VIII, in An Old-Fashioned Girl, Boston, Mass.: Roberts Brothers, published 1870, →OCLC:
1 more example
Or when you leave the house and remember half an hour later that you left a teakettle going on the stove.1992, Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash, page 358:
Rare To make a shrill sound like a boiling teakettle.
The Carolina wrens love it too, and they were teakettling away around me.2006, Tim Traver, Sippewissett, Or, Life on a Salt Marsh, page 46:
They'd been running hard and the only thing he could hear was his own heart pounding and his breath teakettling in and out of his lungs.2011, Joe Schreiber, The Unholy Cause: