Word.ws English Dictionary

hung fire

hung fire is the simple past and past participle of hang fire.

Meaning of hang fire

Verb

hang fire (third-person singular simple present hangs fire, present participle hanging fire, simple past and past participle hung fire)

  1. To fail to fire immediately when the trigger is pulled.
    • […] a number of Portuguese soldiers entered, one of whom, taking me for a Frenchman, for I had the French soldier's jacket on, my own being wet, snapped his piece at me, which luckily hung fire.1841, Edward Costello, The adventures of a soldier
  2. (figuratively) To wait or hold back.
    • We were told to hang fire on the decision until management came back with a proposal.

See all 3 meanings of hang fire

Questions about hung fire

What is hung fire the simple past and past participle of?
Hung fire is the simple past and past participle of hang fire.

Words near hung fire in the dictionary

  1. hung beef
  2. hung behind
  3. hung by a hair
  4. hung by a thread
  5. hung by the eyelids
  6. hung fire
  7. hung five
  8. hung heavy
  9. Hung Hom
  10. hung in
  11. hung in the balance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hung fire (page history and authors); hang fire (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: “hung fire.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hung_fire. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.