Word.ws English Dictionary

under fire

/ˈʌndə faɪə/US/ˈʌndɚ faɪɚ/

under fire prepositional phrase: subjected to enemy attack with firearms.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Subjected to enemy attack with firearms.
    • courage under fire
    • coolness under fire
  2. (figuratively) Criticized or held responsible for something.
    • grace under fire
    • The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. […] He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire: he became actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and...1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

Examples of under fire in a sentence

  • Enlisted personnel are thoroughly trained and stay calm under fire.2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Turians: Military Doctrine Codex entry:
  • Meanwhile, the government's own Human Services department is under fire from the Ombudsman for its failure to protect children in its care.2009, Michael O'Connor, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 2
  • Over the past two years, particularly in 2018, Network Rail has come under fire about its approaches to trackside tree-felling across its 52,000-hectare estate.2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58:

Questions about under fire

What does under fire mean?
Under fire means subjected to enemy attack with firearms.
How do you use under fire in a sentence?
Enlisted personnel are thoroughly trained and stay calm under fire.
What part of speech is under fire?
Under fire is a prepositional phrase.
How do you pronounce under fire?
Under fire is pronounced /ˈʌndɚ faɪɚ/ (US).

Words near under fire in the dictionary

  1. under correction
  2. under cover
  3. under cover of darkness
  4. under cover of night
  5. under erasure
  6. under fire
  7. under glass
  8. under ground
  9. under hack
  10. under hatches
  11. under lock and key

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: under 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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