Word.ws English Dictionary

back fires

back fires is the plural of back fire.

Meaning of back fire

Noun

back fire (plural back fires)

  1. A small, controlled fire set in the path of a larger uncontrolled fire, in order to limit the spread of the large fire by removing its fuel.
  2. An explosion produced either by a running internal combustion engine that occurs in the air intake or exhaust system rather than inside the combustion chamber or unburned fuel or hydrocarbons ignited somewhere in the exhaust system.

Questions about back fires

What is back fires the plural of?
Back fires is the plural of back fire.

Words near back fires in the dictionary

  1. back extensions
  2. back feet
  3. back field
  4. back fields
  5. back fire
  6. back fires
  7. back five
  8. back fives
  9. back foot
  10. back foot shot
  11. back foot shots

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: back fires (page history and authors); back fire (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “back fires.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/back_fires. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.