A device or facility that burns waste material at very high temperatures to reduce it to ash.
From 'incinerate' (from Latin 'incinerare': 'in-' + 'cinis' meaning ash) + '-or' (machine). The Latin 'cinis' also gives us 'cinder' (partially burned coal).
The word 'cinder' and 'incinerator' both trace back to Latin 'cinis' (ash), and this root choice reveals how Romans thought about burning—not as destruction but as transformation into ash, a shift of state rather than annihilation, which influenced how all Romance languages talk about fire.
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