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bonfire

UK/ˈbɒnfaɪə/US/ˈbɑnˌfaɪɚ/
nounB1+Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,347 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: bonfires

A bonfire is a big open-air fire built for celebration or for burning garden waste. Light the bonfire, a bonfire in the garden, Bonfire Night.

In Britain, Bonfire Night is the fifth of November, marking the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in 1605, and it is celebrated with fires and fireworks. Garden bonfires are lawful in most places but are subject to nuisance rules if the smoke bothers neighbours. Note the phrase a bonfire of regulations, meaning a mass abolition of rules, which is standard political language.

Fir0002 · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of bonfire

  1. 1nounbonfireA large open-air fire for celebration or burning waste.B1+

    “The bonfire took about three weeks to build and one night to burn.”

bonfire is a fire.

Where it comes from

The word is bone plus fire — a bone-fire, a fire in which bones were burned, recorded from the fifteenth century. The spelling changed and the bones were quietly forgotten, which is probably just as well.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *bʰeyh₂-

  2. English, today

    bonfire

{{multiple images |direction = vertical |image1 = Catholic guy being burnt.jpg

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Music, Art & Culture, Weddings & Celebrations

Practise this word

bonfire in the wild

  • A bonfire of the vanities is a burning of objects condemned by religious authorities as occasions of sin.

    Bonfire of the vanities

  • Francesco Guicciardini's The History of Florence gives a firsthand account of the 1497 Florentine bonfire of the vanities.

    Bonfire of the vanities

  • Celebrating that the king had survived, people lit bonfires around London.

    Guy Fawkes Night

  • Every Eleventh of July, many Protestants celebrate by lighting a bonfire in the centre of the estate.

    Ballycraigy

  • In Northern Ireland, the Eleventh Night or 11th Night, also known as "bonfire night", is the night before the Twelfth of July, an Ulster Protestant celebration.

    Eleventh Night

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.