Word.ws English Dictionary

fire eater

fire eater is the alternative form of fire-eater.

Meaning of fire-eater

Noun

fire-eater (plural fire-eaters)

  1. A performer who pretends to swallow fire.
    Synonyms:
    firebreather, fire-breather, fire breather
  2. (figuratively) A quarrelsome or belligerent person.
    • "But he is a regular fire eater!"
      "He's a bad man—a blamed bad man!" fluttered Danny Griswold.
      "That's right," nodded Lewis Little. "He really wants to fight with swords, I believe."Burt L. Standish (Gilbert Patten)
  3. (US, historical) An extreme partisan for the South before the US Civil War.
    • Frustrated in their attempts to change the law, fire-eaters turned their efforts to breaking it.1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom, Oxford, published 2003, page 103

Forms of fire eater

pluralfire eaters

Questions about fire eater

What is fire eater the alternative form of?
Fire eater is the alternative form of fire-eater.

Words near fire eater in the dictionary

  1. fire dogs
  2. fire door
  3. fire doors
  4. fire drill
  5. fire drills
  6. fire eater
  7. fire eaters
  8. fire eating
  9. fire eatings
  10. fire eel
  11. fire engine

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fire eater (page history and authors); fire-eater (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: “fire eater.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/fire_eater. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.