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Glite Dictionary
🔥 To excite 💻 To start a machine 🚬 To light a cigarette
to fire up

to fire up

6 5.5
Light a cigarette, cigar, or pipe to smoke
  • phrasal verb
  • /faɪər ʌp/
  • Informal
translation icon : encender (un cigarrillo)
  • After a long day, he decided to fire up a cigarette to relax.
  • fired up a cigarette
  • fired up his pipe
  • fired up a joint

Examples

  • I'm going downstairs to see if I can get the furnace fired up.

    Fiction book (2001)

  • He fired up another cigarette, cracked a beer, watching Hugo with the dull eyes of an insect.

    Fiction book (1995)

  • He fired up the cigar.

    Fiction book (1992)

  • Woo fired up a cigarette he didn't want.

    Fiction book (1994)

  • Before the meeting, she took a moment to fire up her pipe and gather her thoughts.

  • As the sun began to set, he stepped outside to fire up a cigar on the patio.

Synonyms

to smoke
vsto fire up
∞ 1.0

To breathe in and out the fumes of tobacco

focuses on starting the habit by creating a flame rather than the ongoing inhaling
to light
vsto fire up
905 1.0

To make something start to burn or shine

applies to beginning cigarette use after creating a flame not general ignition
to light up
vsto fire up
  • Informal
33 4.6

Start smoking a cigarette or pipe

is identical in meaning and use
to lit up a durry
vsto fire up
  • Australian
9.9

To light and smoke a cigarette

is the same action but with neutral, nonregional wording
ignited
vsto fire up
3.5

Set on fire so it is burning

refers to starting a cigarette by creating a flame not general burning

Antonyms

to put out
114 2.0

Make a fire, light, or cigarette stop burning

to extinguish
23 4.4

Stop a fire, candle, or other light from burning

Surface Forms

fire up infinitive
fired up past
fired up past participle
firing up present participle
fires up third person singular

Morphology

fire + up

The sense 'to start or switch on' is motivated by the metaphor of igniting or activating (fire) combined with an upward/completive particle (up), so a learner who knows 'fire' in the senses 'ignite' or 'excite' and 'up' as increase/activate can plausibly infer the meaning. However the mapping is somewhat metaphorical and not strictly compositional—learners who only know 'fire' as 'to excite' or only as 'to shoot' may not predict the machine-start sense—so it is partially transparent but not fully predictable.

Etymology

Fire up comes from lighting tobacco: you make a small fire to light a cigarette, cigar, or pipe and then bring it up to your mouth. So fire up means 'to begin smoking'.