Word.ws English Dictionary

flame out

flame out verb: to become suddenly angry; to break out into indignation or similar emotion; to flare up.

Verb

flame out (third-person singular simple present flames out, present participle flaming out, simple past and past participle flamed out)

  1. (archaic) To become suddenly angry; to break out into indignation or similar emotion; to flare up.
    • [O]n being brought home, and giving us ground to suppose he was much worse hurt than he really was, and a fever ensuing, every one flamed out; and all was laid at my door.1748, [Samuel Richardson], chapter 4, in Clarissa. Or, The History of a Young Lady: […], volume I, London: […] S[amuel] Richardson; [a]nd sold by A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC
  2. To fail due to extinction of flame.
    • If on flame out, steam pressure goes below 75# you must go back on gas to return [....] The grievant replied that If he did so, the boiler would flame out.1967, American Labor Arbitration Awards, volume 11, Prentice-Hall
    • On 24 July 1998, the silo THC analyzer's FID flamed out and could not be relighted.2000, “Hot mix asphalt plants technical systems audit of testing at plant "C"”, in U.S, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA-454R-00-026
  3. (figuratively) To fail, usually spectacularly.
  4. (intransitive) To stop due to exhaustion.

Forms of flame out

third-person singular presentflames out
present participleflaming out
past participleflamed out
pastflamed out

Origin of flame out

flame + out

Words formed from flame out

Questions about flame out

What does flame out mean?
Flame out means to become suddenly angry; to break out into indignation or similar emotion; to flare up.
What part of speech is flame out?
Flame out is a verb.
What is the past tense of flame out?
The past tense of flame out is flamed out.

Words near flame out in the dictionary

  1. flame lily
  2. flame maple
  3. flame nettle
  4. flame of the forest
  5. flame of the woods
  6. flame out
  7. flame photometry
  8. flame retardant
  9. flame retardants
  10. flame scallop
  11. flame scallops

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flame out (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-flame out.wav.

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