brushfire
brushfire noun: a large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which occurs in forests.
Noun
brushfire (plural brushfires)
- A large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which occurs in forests.
- A war that arises suddenly and is limited in scope or area.
- It may be a brushfire operation or an operation on the scale of the Korean war; it will certainly not involve the home territories of the United States and Soviet Russia as theaters of hostilities.1958, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Foreign Trade Policy, Foreign Trade Policy: Hearings, Eighty-fifth Congress, page 651
- I grant you it may not be in the actual application of mechanical devices, but if you have the volume to have supremacy in a major war it is obvious you would have the volume to take care of a brushfire war.1959, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations, Financial statements of field commanders, page 251
Forms of brushfire
| plural | brushfires |
|---|---|
| alternative form | brush fire |
| alternative form | brush-fire |
Origin of brushfire
From brush + fire.
Questions about brushfire
- What does brushfire mean?
- Brushfire means a large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which occurs in forests.
- What part of speech is brushfire?
- Brushfire is a noun.
- What is the plural of brushfire?
- The plural of brushfire is brushfires.
Words near brushfire in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: brushfire (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “brushfire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/brushfire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.