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Glite Dictionary
🔄 To go wrong 💥 To make a bang 💥 A loud noise 🔥 A control fire 🔥 To set a fire 🔄 A bad result
backfire

backfire

1 7.4
A fire set on purpose to burn fuel ahead of a wildfire to stop it
  • noun
  • /ˈbækˌfaɪər/
  • Specialized
translation icon : contrafuego
  • The backfire successfully burned away the dry brush in the path of the oncoming flames.
  • set a backfire
  • light a backfire
  • firefighters set backfires

Examples

  • Or the backfires could end it, planned burns that stripped bands of forest down to rock and naked soil so that nothing remained to nourish the fire.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • This is the immune system's version of a firebreak: Just as firefighters may start a backfire in the path of a raging forest fire to stop its advance, virus-infected cells destroy themselves so they don't become a mini-factory in which the virus can replicate itself and spread to uninfected cells.

    Academic text (1996)

  • Firefighters created a backfire to prevent the approaching wildfire from spreading further.

  • A controlled backfire helped contain the massive blaze by reducing the available fuel for the fire.

Synonyms

firefighting technique
vsbackfire
  • Specialized
4.1

A way people use to put out or control fires

is a specific deliberate burn that removes fuel ahead of an approaching wildfire

How Big

backfire
  • Specialized
1 7.4
surface fire
  • Specialized
5.5

Surface Forms

backfire singular
backfires plural

Morphology

backfire = back + fire (transparent) = back + fire

This sense names a deliberate fire set at the rear (i.e., to burn back toward an advancing blaze); the compound components map straightforwardly.

Etymology

The word backfire comes from back ('behind') and fire ('burning'). Firefighters sometimes light a small fire behind a moving blaze so it uses up the fuel in front of the big fire, so a backfire is a controlled fire used to stop a wildfire.