Word.ws English Dictionary

fan the flame

fan the flame is the alternative form of fan the flames.

Meaning of fan the flames

Verb

fan the flames (third-person singular simple present fans the flames, present participle fanning the flames, simple past and past participle fanned the flames)

  1. (idiomatic) To intensify or worsen an already difficult situation.
    • In simple terms, both superpowers poured gasoline on the fire and fanned the flames, hoping that out of the ashes would arise a region committed either to democracy or to Soviet-style communism.2002, Scott Hunt, The Future of Peace: On the Front Lines with the World's Great Peacemakers, HarperCollins, published 2004, →ISBN, page 207

Forms of fan the flame

third-person singular presentfans the flame
present participlefanning the flame
past participlefanned the flame
pastfanned the flame

Questions about fan the flame

What is fan the flame the alternative form of?
Fan the flame is the alternative form of fan the flames.

Words near fan the flame in the dictionary

  1. fan service
  2. fan servicy
  3. fan sign
  4. fan signs
  5. fan the fire
  6. fan the flame
  7. fan the flames
  8. fan traceries
  9. fan tracery
  10. fan zone
  11. fan zones

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fan the flame (page history and authors); fan the flames (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-fan the flame.wav.

Cite this entry: “fan the flame.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fan_the_flame. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.