bonfired

Verb

bonfire (third-person singular simple present bonfires, present participle bonfiring, simple past and past participle bonfired)

1. (transitive) To destroy (something) by, or as if by, burning on a bonfire; (more generally) to burn or set alight.
   • [L]ike the Christmas joke of snapdragons for children, the very liquor was to be bonfired also, and drank burning.1828 May, “[Review of New Publications.] 96. Nichols’s Progresses of King James I. Parts XIX. and XX. (Concluded from p. 154.)”, in Sylvanus Urban [pseudonym], editor, The Gentleman’s Magazine, and...
2. (transitive) To fire (pottery) using a bonfire.
   • The pots are formed by the coiling method and bonfired using palm fronds, grass and sometimes dung.2000, Moira Vincentelli, “Running the Business”, in Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels, Manchester; New York, N.Y.: Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 195
3. (obsolete, transitive) To start a bonfire in (a place); to light up (a place) with a bonfire.
   • They almost carried him [the king] into the palace on their shoulders; and at night the whole town was illuminated and bonfired.1743 November 28 (Gregorian calendar), Horace Walpole, “To Sir Horace Mann”, in The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford: […], volumes I (1735–1748), Philadelphia, Pa.: Lea and Blanchard...
4. (intransitive, rare) To make, or celebrate around, a bonfire.
   • [W]hen the news of the battle of Lissa came even to our remote quarter of Ireland, we considered it as a triumph for the cause of Protestantism, and illuminated, and bonfired, and had a sermon at church, and kept the Prussian king's birthday, on which my uncle would get drunk, as indeed on any...1844 January–December, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “In which Barry Takes a Near View of Military Glory”, in “The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. [The Luck of Barry Lyndon.]”, in Miscellanies...

See all 8 meanings of bonfire