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 If the reader hasn't progressed far enough in learning English to know what a ""cooker"" is, then redundant talk of ""stoves"" is not going to help. I once owned a pocket dictinoary that defined ""quartz"" as ""pure silex"" and ""silex"" as ""pure quartz"" - not useful to anyone. We're not teaching English here and a long recitation of synonyms is a misfeature. 
 And what's wrong with an operational definition? 
 Can we at least keep ""tabletop"" out of the ""definition"" ?   "