Word.ws English Dictionary

dry fire

dry fire verb: to discharge a weapon without ammunition in the chamber.

Verb

dry fire (third-person singular simple present dry fires, present participle dry firing, simple past and past participle dry fired)

  1. To discharge a weapon without ammunition in the chamber.
    • Rob finished cleaning his empty gun then pointed it at an imaginary target and dry fired.2009, Debra Parmley, A Desperate Journey, →ISBN, page 32
  2. To draw and release a bow without an arrow loaded.

Forms of dry fire

third-person singular presentdry fires
present participledry firing
past participledry fired
pastdry fired
alternative formdryfire
alternative formdry-fire

Questions about dry fire

What does dry fire mean?
Dry fire means to discharge a weapon without ammunition in the chamber.
What part of speech is dry fire?
Dry fire is a verb.
What is the past tense of dry fire?
The past tense of dry fire is dry fired.

Words near dry fire in the dictionary

  1. dry eye
  2. dry eye syndrome
  3. dry eyes
  4. dry film thickness
  5. dry film thicknesses
  6. dry fire
  7. dry fired
  8. dry fires
  9. dry firing
  10. dry flies
  11. dry fly

Source and license

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