Word.ws English Dictionary

flaming onion

flaming onion noun: a 37 mm Hotchkiss revolving-barrel anti-aircraft gun used by the German army at the beginning of World War I.

Noun

flaming onion (plural flaming onions)

  1. (historical, slang) A 37 mm Hotchkiss revolving-barrel anti-aircraft gun used by the German army at the beginning of World War I.
  2. (historical, slang) The flare or tracer ammunition fired by this weapon.
    • Allied pilots feared and loathed these, because a hit from a flaming onion instantly turned an aeroplane into an inferno.1985, Robert Harrison, Aviation Lore in Faulkner, page 116

Forms of flaming onion

pluralflaming onions

Origin of flaming onion

From its appearance after exploding.

Questions about flaming onion

What does flaming onion mean?
Flaming onion means a 37 mm Hotchkiss revolving-barrel anti-aircraft gun used by the German army at the beginning of World War I.
What part of speech is flaming onion?
Flaming onion is a noun.
What is the plural of flaming onion?
The plural of flaming onion is flaming onions.

Words near flaming onion in the dictionary

  1. flaming Katy
  2. flaming Lamborghini
  3. flaming Lamborghinis
  4. flaming mad
  5. flaming Nora
  6. flaming onion
  7. flaming onions
  8. flaming out
  9. flaming queen
  10. flaming queens
  11. flaming sword

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: flaming onion (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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Cite this entry: “flaming onion.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/flaming_onion. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.