Word.ws English Dictionary

firebreaking

firebreaking noun: the activity of creating firebreaks.

Noun

firebreaking (uncountable)

  1. The activity of creating firebreaks.
    • Generally, the forest, owing to the flatness of the country, lends itself to ideal subdivision into compartments and cheap firebreaking by horse-drawn graders.1928, The Australian Forestry Journal - Volumes 11-14, page 8
    • The usual method of firebreaking is to grade two parallel lines and burn the intervening vegetation.1984, Graham Norman Harrington, Management of Australia's Rangelands, →ISBN, page 152
  2. (public relations) To direct media attention at a second story in order to minimize the impact of an embarrassing story.
    • Below the line spin involves setting and driving the news agenda, but also 'firebreaking' (deliberately constructing a story to divert journalists away from an embarrassing story, e.g., Campbell's leak to the Sunday Times that MI6 was investigating Chris Patten when the story of Robin Cook's affair...2005, Bob Franklin, Key Concepts in Journalism Studies, →ISBN
    • Gaber (2000, p. 512) has explored and listed distinct techniques deployed by communications managers to cajole journalists and set the agenda, ranging from efforts to plant a story, to activities of' 'firebreaking' aiming to divert the media's attention from a potentially negative story.2014, Christian Schnee, Political Reputation Management: The Strategy Myth, →ISBN

Adjective

firebreaking (not comparable)

  1. Acting as a firebreak.
    • A chessboard of firebreaking hedges is, therefore, considered to be essential in any attempt to educate a population to protect their soil against bush fires.1955, Sudan Notes and Records - Volume 36, page 19
    • Fire frequency lessened at the time of settlement because of the firebreaking effect of roads and fields, and the grubs grew into multiple-stemmed trees and shaded out the heliophious prairie herbs;1966, John H. McAndrews, Postglacial History of Prairie, Savanna, and Forest in Northwestern Minnesota

Examples of firebreaking in a sentence

  • The meat goats are grazed in organic olive orchards, and are also used in three counties for fuel load reduction in ponderosa pine plantations, firebreaking in forests and land cleaning.1997, Sustainable Agriculture - Volumes 9-12, page 62:
  • For example, fire suppression on wildlands, and the firebreaking qualities of roads and other human developments have altered natural fire regimes over entire regions.1993, Bill N. McKnight, Biological pollution:

Questions about firebreaking

What does firebreaking mean?
Firebreaking means the activity of creating firebreaks.
How do you use firebreaking in a sentence?
The meat goats are grazed in organic olive orchards, and are also used in three counties for fuel load reduction in ponderosa pine plantations, firebreaking in forests and land cleaning.
What part of speech is firebreaking?
Firebreaking can be a noun or an adjective.

Words near firebreaking in the dictionary

  1. firebrands
  2. firebrass
  3. firebrat
  4. firebrats
  5. firebreak
  6. firebreaking
  7. firebreaks
  8. firebreath
  9. firebreather
  10. firebreathers
  11. firebreathing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: firebreaking (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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