controlled burn

controlled burn noun: a wildfire or brushfire set intentionally and carefully managed for purposes of fire suppression, agriculture, ecological management, etc.

Image: USFWS - Pacific Region, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

controlled burn (plural controlled burns)

A wildfire or brushfire set intentionally and carefully managed for purposes of fire suppression, agriculture, ecological management, etc.

Synonyms:

backburn, burnoff, hazard reduction burn, prescribed burn, swailing

Verb

controlled burn (third-person singular simple present controlled burns, present participle controlled burning, simple past and past participle controlled burned)

(transitive) To set and manage such a fire.

Synonyms of controlled burn

Forms of controlled burn

Noun
plural	controlled burns
Verb
third-person singular present	controlled burns
present participle	controlled burning
past participle	controlled burned
past	controlled burned

Questions about controlled burn

What does controlled burn mean?: Controlled burn means a wildfire or brushfire set intentionally and carefully managed for purposes of fire suppression, agriculture, ecological management, etc.
What part of speech is controlled burn?: Controlled burn can be a noun or a verb.
What is the plural of controlled burn?: The plural of controlled burn is controlled burns.

Words near controlled burn in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: controlled burn (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: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “controlled burn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/controlled_burn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.