firing

Pluralfirings (some meanings)

1. 1
   noununcountable

   The shooting of a gun or other weapon, whether a single shot or a sustained barrage.

   The firing from the warship continued well into the night.

   Investigators tried to determine the source of the firing.

   Similarshooting, gunfire, shelling

   Note

   Gunfire comes in two grammatical shapes. As a mass noun it is continuous sound, as in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940): "He heard the firing." As a count noun each discharge or volley is separate, as when Defoe writes of "all their Signals and Firings" proving fruitless. Use the uncountable form for an ongoing exchange of shots and the plural for distinct, deliberate discharges.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The act of dismissing an employee from a job, usually because of poor work or misconduct.

   The firing of three managers signaled a major shake-up.

   News of his firing spread quickly through the staff.

   Similardismissal, sacking, termination, discharge, ouster

   Oppositehiring, appointment

   Note

   Most at home in the pairing "hiring and firing," the everyday shorthand for an employer's power over staff. It pluralizes freely, as in a 2016 New York Times column on Theresa May's "hirings and firings." Unlike neutral words for leaving a job, it suggests the decision was the employer's and was made for cause, often poor performance.

3. 3
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of fire.

   Witnesses accused the guards of firing into the crowd.

   The coach is firing up the players before kickoff.

   Note

   The verb form and the nouns share one spelling, but the grammar tells them apart. As a gerund it keeps the verb's direct object: firing the manager, firing a rifle. As a noun it needs "of": the firing of the manager, which is the dismissal sense. In continuous tenses it combines with be (the guards were firing). It also carries phrasal verbs such as firing up.

4. 4
   nouncountable or uncountable

   The process of applying heat to clay or similar material to produce finished pottery.

   The firing of the vase at high temperature gave it a glassy surface.

   Uneven firing left small cracks across the ceramic plate.

   Similarbaking

   Note

   Potters count their firings. A glazed pot goes back into the kiln for a second firing, and each pass through the heat drives off water and fuses the clay body so that it can never soften again. As a general process the word is uncountable (uneven firing). As a single trip through the kiln it takes an article and a plural (a second firing, several firings).

5. 5
   noununcountable

   The act of putting fuel on a fire, as when stoking a furnace or boiler.

   The firing of the furnace demanded a steady supply of coal.

   Constant firing kept the locomotive's boiler at full pressure.

   Similarstoking, fueling

   Note

   On steam railways this was a job and a craft: the fireman shoveling coal into the firebox. An old hand could speak of "his firing days" and of planning his firing around the curves ahead. A 1961 account of French locomotives contrasts firing one side of the firebox at a time with firing each side in alternate shovelfuls. The word names the labor, not the fuel itself.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The fuel used to keep a fire burning.

   The cottage relied on peat and dry wood for its firing.

   Villagers stored enough firing to last until spring.

   Similarfuel, firewood

   Note

   Here the word means whatever is burned: wood, peat or coal, treated as a single mass rather than counted. In Shakespeare's The Tempest a servant promises to "fetch in firing." In 1933 George Orwell lists "free firing" among a lodging house's amenities, alongside the cooking-pots. In both, fuel is something supplied, fetched or stored, like any other household provision.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The burning of body tissue with a hot instrument to seal a wound or treat an injury.

   The surgeon used firing to seal the severed vessel.

   Repeated firing left scars along the animal's leg.

   Similarcauterization, cautery, searing

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