fireworks
- 1Plural of firework.
The store sold out of fireworks before the holiday weekend.
Several fireworks failed to ignite during the show.
Note
The ordinary count plural, used for the devices themselves: you buy, light or set off several fireworks. The compound is simply fire plus work. Its close match with Dutch vuurwerk and German Feuerwerk is no accident, since English seems to have borrowed the word from Dutch around 1575. The same spelling also names the display itself, which has no singular.
- 2An event or display in which fireworks are set off.
The whole town gathered on the hill to see the fireworks at midnight.
Heavy rain forced the city to postpone the fireworks until the following evening.
Similarpyrotechnics, display
Note
Here the word names the whole occasion rather than the rockets, and it has no singular. You go to the fireworks, and the fireworks were postponed, always with a plural verb. The sense has long belonged to state spectacle: A Description of the Machine for the Fireworks (1749) details one such show, and Christopher Hogwood (2005) ties Handel's Fireworks Music to the political display it celebrated.
- 3An occasion or situation that is noisy and wild, or that erupts into anger or violence.
The debate produced real fireworks once both candidates lost their tempers.
Everyone expected fireworks when the rival teams faced off in the final.
Similardrama, sparks, trouble, uproar, commotion
Note
The metaphor keeps the noise and the sudden flare but drops the beauty, and it turns up wherever tempers rise: a quarrel at home, a courtroom, a football game. It borrows the verbs of the real thing, so fireworks go off, start or begin. An adjective can name the arena, as in legal fireworks. Like the display sense, it is plural only, so a quarrel is never a firework.
fireworks is a form of firework
firework, noun: A device packed with gunpowder and other chemicals that, when lit, produces colored flames, sparks, whistles, or bangs, often shooting high into the sky before exploding, used for celebration. Full entry
- Forms
- fireworkfireworks plural
- Spelling
- firework → fireworks: add -s
Practice
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Origin
Formed from "fire" + "work(s)," and closely linked to Dutch "vuurwerk" and German "Feuerwerk," both meaning "fireworks." First attested in English around 1575, it probably came from the Dutch (1540), which came from the German (early 16th century), going back to Middle High German "viurwerc" (14th century, meaning "fuel, firewood").