brushfire

noun

Etymology

From brush + fire.

  1. inherited from *péh₂wr̥
  2. inherited from *fōr — “fire
  3. inherited from *fuir
  4. inherited from fȳr — “fire
  5. inherited from fyr
  6. compounded as brushfire — “brush + fire

Definitions

  1. A large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which occurs in…

    A large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which occurs in forests.

  2. A war that arises suddenly and is limited in scope or area.

    • It may be a brushfire operation or an operation on the scale of the Korean war; it will certainly not involve the home territories of the United States and Soviet Russia as theaters of hostilities.
    • I grant you it may not be in the actual application of mechanical devices, but if you have the volume to have supremacy in a major war it is obvious you would have the volume to take care of a brushfire war.
    • If a brushfire conflict does threaten superpower interests, or the general peace, a superpower may intervene in an unusual way.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for brushfire. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA