Word.ws English Dictionary

fire in the belly

fire in the belly noun: the emotional stamina and vigor, passion, or inner drive to achieve something, to take action, etc.

Noun

fire in the belly

  1. (idiomatic) The emotional stamina and vigor, passion, or inner drive to achieve something, to take action, etc.
    • Near-synonyms: ardor, drive, fervor, initiative, intestinal fortitude, moxie, spunk, zeal
    • Carlyle, indeed, had so much more depth and knowledge of the heart, his portraits of mankind are felt and rendered with so much more poetic comprehension, and he, like his favourite Ram Dass, had a fire in his belly so much more hotly burning than the patent reading lamp by which Macaulay studied.1894, Robert Louis Stevenson, Familiar Studies of Men and Books, Preface

Examples of fire in the belly in a sentence

  • I felt no conviction of a burning sincerity, of that fire in the belly which made some of the wilder nonconformist parsons of my youth appear almost incandescent.1955 June 9, J. B. Priestley, “Billy Graham's Nothing New—In Fact, Perhaps, Below Par”, in Vancouver Sun, Canada, retrieved 20 Jun 2011:
  • “He has the fire in the belly to make this thing work,” said Mr.1987 September 27, Sam Howe Vernovek, “Keeping Low Profile, Ethics Panel Chief Aims for Thoroughness”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 Jun...
  • In Washington, some Republicans are skeptical that Thune has the fire in the belly for the brutal campaign process.2011 January 27, Michael Crowley, “Decision Time for Senator John Thune”, in Time:

Synonyms of fire in the belly

Forms of fire in the belly

alternative formfire in one's belly

Questions about fire in the belly

What does fire in the belly mean?
Fire in the belly means the emotional stamina and vigor, passion, or inner drive to achieve something, to take action, etc.
How do you use fire in the belly in a sentence?
I felt no conviction of a burning sincerity, of that fire in the belly which made some of the wilder nonconformist parsons of my youth appear almost incandescent.
What part of speech is fire in the belly?
Fire in the belly is a noun.

Words near fire in the belly in the dictionary

  1. fire houses
  2. fire hydrant
  3. fire hydrants
  4. fire ice
  5. fire in one's belly
  6. fire in the belly
  7. fire in the hole
  8. fire inspection
  9. fire inspections
  10. fire inspector
  11. fire inspectors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fire in the belly (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: en-au-fire in the belly.ogg.

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