Word.ws English Dictionary

firehose

/ˈfaɪ.ərˌhoʊz/

firehose is the alternative form of fire hose.

Meaning of fire hose

Noun

fire hose (plural fire hoses)

  1. A hose designed to deliver water to douse a fire, usually much stronger and wider in diameter than a garden hose.
    • Although the subway structure is of non-combustible material, a fire protection system, with fire hose cabinets on every underground platform, has been provided.1954 June, “Yonge Street Subway, Toronto”, in Railway Magazine, page 422
  2. (idiomatic) Any fast, heavy stream (e.g. of information).
    • She felt she was standing in front of a fire hose of instructions, trying to absorb them all with a sponge.
  3. A feed of all updates to a website.
    • Links contained within feeds (RSS, fire hose, syndicated)2012, Rob Garner, Search and Social: The Definitive Guide to Real-Time Content Marketing, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 286
  4. (colloquial, idiomatic) A human penis.
  5. An fast-flowing unsupported flow of lava escaping from a solid rockface.

Verb

firehose (third-person singular simple present firehoses, present participle firehosing, simple past and past participle firehosed)

  1. To wash something down with a firehose; to douse with a large amount of water (or chemical agent) sprayed from a hose, to extinguish a fire.

Forms of firehose

Noun
pluralfirehoses
Verb
third-person singular presentfirehoses
present participlefirehosing
past participlefirehosed
pastfirehosed

Origin of firehose

From fire + hose.

Words formed from firehose

Phrases with firehose

Questions about firehose

What does firehose mean?
Firehose means to wash something down with a firehose; to douse with a large amount of water (or chemical agent) sprayed from a hose, to extinguish a fire.
What is firehose the alternative form of?
Firehose is the alternative form of fire hose.
What part of speech is firehose?
Firehose is a verb.
How do you pronounce firehose?
Firehose is pronounced /ˈfaɪ.ərˌhoʊz/.
What is the past tense of firehose?
The past tense of firehose is firehosed.

Words near firehose in the dictionary

  1. firehead tetras
  2. firehole
  3. fireholes
  4. firehook
  5. firehooks
  6. firehose
  7. firehose cursor
  8. firehose cursors
  9. firehosed
  10. firehoses
  11. firehosing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: firehose (page history and authors); fire hose (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-firehose.wav.

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