Word.ws English Dictionary

fire and forget

fire and forget noun: a kind of missile guidance system which does not require further control after launch, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line of sight of the target.

Noun

fire and forget (uncountable)

  1. A kind of missile guidance system which does not require further control after launch, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line of sight of the target.
  2. (attributive) The practice of transmitting or raising something, such as an event, and then proceeding without checking for any result or response.
    • An event aggregator facilitates a fire-and-forget model of communication. The object triggering the event doesn't care if there are any subscribers. It just fires the event and moves on. A mediator, though, might use events to make decisions, but it is definitely not fire and forget.2013, Addy Osmani, Developing Backbone.js Applications, page 175
    • Post is a “fire and forget” where the UI thread work is performed asynchronously; Send is synchronous in that the call blocks until the UI thread work has been performed.2014, Richard Blewett, Andrew Clymer, Pro Asynchronous Programming with .NET, page 25

Adjective

fire and forget (not comparable)

  1. Not requiring further control, feedback, or response after an initial action, launch, etc.

Questions about fire and forget

What does fire and forget mean?
Fire and forget means a kind of missile guidance system which does not require further control after launch, and can hit its target without the launcher being in line of sight of the target.
What part of speech is fire and forget?
Fire and forget can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near fire and forget in the dictionary

  1. fire alarm horns
  2. fire alarm pull station
  3. fire alarm system
  4. fire alarms
  5. fire and brimstone
  6. fire and forget
  7. fire ant
  8. fire ants
  9. fire appliance
  10. fire appliances
  11. fire arm

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fire and forget (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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