Word.ws English Dictionary

flame war

flame war noun: an argument consisting entirely or largely of flames by various parties that serve only to escalate the dispute.

Noun

flame war (plural flame wars)

  1. (Internet, dated) An argument consisting entirely or largely of flames by various parties that serve only to escalate the dispute.
    • Remember, Smokey the Bear says, "Only you can prevent flame wars".2008 July 12, Megan McArdle, “Note to trolls”, in The Atlantic
    • That post was the starting point for a flame war between Linux creator Linus Torvalds and Tanenbaum and a bunch of other enthusiasts, who later became the first Linux developers.2019, Kamran Amini, Extreme C, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 362

Forms of flame war

pluralflame wars
alternative formflamewar

Origin of flame war

From flame + war.

Questions about flame war

What does flame war mean?
Flame war means an argument consisting entirely or largely of flames by various parties that serve only to escalate the dispute.
What part of speech is flame war?
Flame war is a noun.
What is the plural of flame war?
The plural of flame war is flame wars.

Words near flame war in the dictionary

  1. flame trenches
  2. flame tube
  3. flame up
  4. flame violet
  5. flame violets
  6. flame war
  7. flame wars
  8. flame-of-the-forest
  9. flame-of-the-woods
  10. flame-out
  11. flame-outs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flame war (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 war.wav.

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