To add fuel to a fire to make it burn hotter, or to deliberately encourage or intensify something like anger or emotion.
From Middle English 'stoke' (to poke or tend), possibly from Dutch or Low German origin. Originally meant to tend a furnace or fire physically.
Steam engines that powered the Industrial Revolution needed 'stokers'—workers who constantly fed coal into furnaces—so 'stokes' became a verb tied to the very engine of modern civilization!
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