Word.ws English Dictionary

set fire upon

set fire upon is the obsolete form of set fire to.

Meaning of set fire to

Verb

set fire to (third-person singular simple present sets fire to, present participle setting fire to, simple past set fire to, past participle set fire to or (dialectal) setten fire to)

  1. (transitive) To cause (something) to be on fire; to set (something) alight.
    • They set fire to the house.
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To destroy or dismantle (something).
    • As soon as the new CEO arrived, he started setting fire to the old way of doing things.
  3. (figuratively, transitive) To stir up intense emotion or action in (something).
    • All it took was one word to set fire to the crowd.
    Synonyms:
    set on fire

Forms of set fire upon

third-person singular presentsets fire upon
present participlesetting fire upon
pastset fire upon
past participleset fire upon
past participle (dialectal)setten fire upon

Questions about set fire upon

What is set fire upon the obsolete form of?
Set fire upon is the obsolete form of set fire to.

Words near set fire upon in the dictionary

  1. set fire into
  2. set fire of
  3. set fire on
  4. set fire to
  5. set fire unto
  6. set fire upon
  7. set foot
  8. set foot on land
  9. set for life
  10. set forth
  11. set forward

Source and license

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