Underdog Stories / Everyday expressions

What Does “On the Back Burner” Mean, and Where Did It Come From?

What does on the back burner mean and where did it come from? A pot left to simmer explains the phrase, though its first written use is hard to pin down.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · September 16, 2026

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Twenty pictured a stove with four burners. The front ones were easy to reach. A pot at the back took a little more effort, though it was still cooking. Mario Hines had a question: did that make the pot less important?

To put something on the back burner means to delay work on it while something else gets your attention. The phrase comes from setting a pot toward the rear of a stove when it needs less tending. It suggests a pause, often with the intent to return. It does not, by itself, say the task has no value.

What does on the back burner mean?

In the Appraise the Phrase episode “On The Back Burner,” Mario read several dictionary definitions aloud. Merriam-Webster describes something that will not get immediate attention or action. Cambridge says it is left for later, especially when it is less urgent or important. Those definitions sound close until you tell someone their plans can wait.

Mario heard a difference. He said he might choose one option first without judging the other one worthless. Twenty agreed that “priority” felt easier to say than “importance.” One choice might suit the moment better. The other could still matter a great deal.

Their stove picture helped. Twenty imagined one pot on high heat and another on low. Both had a place. “It could not be on the stove at all,” he said. “I could not be cooking it.” His point was cheerful, if perhaps a risky thing to say to someone waiting on a favor.

The phrase can mean a full pause. Cambridge’s learner’s dictionary says a back-burner task is one you intend to deal with later, even if you are doing nothing about it now. That is why “I’ll get to it next month” is clearer than “It’s on the back burner.” The first gives a date. The second leaves the pot where you cannot quite see it.

Where did on the back burner come from?

The cooking link is plain. A busy cook puts food that needs more attention within easy reach. A pot that can wait goes farther back. Dictionary.com traces the expression to that habit, and Collins describes the rear burner as a place to keep a pot warm. The food has not left the kitchen.

Mario took the episode back to wood and coal stoves. Their cooking surfaces had removable lids over a firebox, and since the heat varied across the stove, a cook could shift a pot to a gentler spot and leave it there. The move was familiar. People knew it long before they needed a figure of speech for a delayed work project.

An 1866 stove catalog offers a useful glimpse. As the Smithsonian Libraries recounts, one model had a reservoir behind the stove’s flues. A damper could send heat beneath it to warm or boil water. Its name is wonderfully modest: the “New Patent Reservoir.” Old kitchens had ways to make heat do several jobs at once.

There is one snag in Mario’s account. He said early wood and coal ranges did not have “burners,” so cooks could not have used the phrase. That draws too hard a line. A National Park Service study describes a wood-or-coal cookstove in use by 1900 as having eight burners. It also describes a cook who had to manage its heat all day. Older stoves differed from modern gas ranges, but the word burner was not waiting for gas to arrive.

When was on the back burner first used?

Here the paper trail gets thin. Collins and Dictionary.com date back burner to 1945–50. That is a dictionary date range, though, and neither entry supplies a named person who first said it. The cooking practice explains the image. It does not identify the speaker who carried it into everyday talk.

Mario brought up a later appearance in The Times of London, dated 1963 in the account he discussed. That made for a neat puzzle: why would a phrase treated as American turn up in a British paper, when dictionaries place it earlier and the London example can only show it was in print there by 1963? A newspaper can’t settle where a phrase began.

“It could not be on the stove at all. I could not be cooking it.”
— Twenty, on Appraise The Phrase

The 1963 example still tells us something. By then, a writer could use the stove image for a public issue and expect readers to follow. The pot was no longer dinner. It was a plan that might sit untouched while people dealt with the matter in front of them.

Twenty wanted a firmer answer. “When did they coin this phrase?” he asked after Mario laid out the dates. Fair question. The dates cannot answer it. A first known written use shows that people were using a phrase by then; it rarely comes with a signed receipt from the person who thought of it.

Did front burner or back burner come first?

Mario proposed another twist: perhaps front burner came first. That would make a neat story about naming the urgent task before the one left waiting. The dictionary dates point the other way. Collins dates front burner, in its sense of top priority, to 1965–70 and says it formed by analogy with back burner. Dictionary.com gives the same range.

Mario also mentioned a date in the 1660s for front burner. That does not fit the dated modern expression in those entries. A stove could have a front for centuries without “put it on the front burner” already meaning “make it your top priority.”

The distinction matters because a cook’s action and a figure of speech are different kinds of evidence. People may have used the front of a stove for demanding jobs long before dictionaries recorded either phrase. What we can check is the language: the published entries put the back burner expression in the mid-20th century and the matching front burner expression later.

Twenty had a less academic reason to favor the front burner. He liked the one on the right. Mario agreed. After all that talk about which expression came first, their shared cooking habit was simple: put the pan where your hand wants to go.

Does putting someone on the back burner mean they do not matter?

It can feel that way. Mario said the phrase sounded a little disrespectful when aimed at a person. A delayed grant application might wait quietly. A friend who hears “you’re on the back burner” is likely to have questions.

The words describe attention right now, rather than a person’s worth. Merriam-Webster’s definition turns on immediate action. Collins includes low priority and temporary suspension. Those meanings leave room for a real commitment that has to wait. They also leave room for someone to keep making vague promises. The phrase alone will not tell you which is happening.

Mario and Twenty spent time trying to separate preference from importance. Twenty said a preference could change. Mario worried that calling something “unimportant” gave the choice extra weight. They were talking about a common small hurt: one person describes a schedule, and the other hears a verdict.

A clearer sentence can spare everyone that argument. “I need to finish this by Friday; can we talk about yours on Monday?” says what the back-burner phrase leaves out. It names the task in front and gives the waiting person a turn. No one has to guess how low the flame is.

Why does the phrase still work?

It gives a delay a physical shape. On the back burner, something is out of your immediate reach, yet still close enough to return to. Cambridge’s examples include plans set aside for a while and a company project left for future attention. Neither example needs an actual stove.

Twenty found that useful in the episode. When the front burners cleared, he said, he could move another pot forward. Mario was less fond of the expression. After digging through its history, he compared it to Boston Market: familiar, in his view, without much to get excited about.

I think the plainness is its strength. It names the little household act of making room, then lets people use that act for much larger plans. It also has a limit. A simmering pot needs someone to remember it. Twenty, at least, had already picked the front-right burner for when the time came.