Word.ws English Dictionary

burnfire

burnfire noun: a bonfire.

Noun

burnfire (plural burnfires)

  1. (nonstandard) A bonfire.
    • It may ha' been wicked, but there 'twas, an' the thought kep' arter me, till all I could think of was the chist; an' byme-by I says to Mary Ellen, one mornin', ' Le's open it to-day an' make a burnfire !'1896, Harper's new monthly magazine, volume 93
    • […] the town of Owegea was made a burnfire of to Grace our Meating our General Course from Tiago to Choconant […]1887, New York (State). Secretary's Office, Frederick Cook, Journals of the military expedition of Major General John Sullivan

Forms of burnfire

pluralburnfires

Origin of burnfire

An alteration (due to its association with burn) of Early Modern English boonfire, bondfire, bounfire (“bonfire”). More at bonfire.

Questions about burnfire

What does burnfire mean?
Burnfire means a bonfire.
What part of speech is burnfire?
Burnfire is a noun.
What is the plural of burnfire?
The plural of burnfire is burnfires.

Words near burnfire in the dictionary

  1. burnettized
  2. burnettizes
  3. burnettizing
  4. Burnewang
  5. Burney
  6. burnfire
  7. burnfires
  8. Burnford
  9. Burnfords
  10. Burngullow
  11. Burnham

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: burnfire (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: “burnfire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/burnfire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.