BACKFIRE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Backfire

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/bˈækfˌaɪr/ Listen

verb

Back-fire, Backfire v. i.

(Engin.) To have or experience a back fire or back fires; said of an internal-combustion engine.

Of a Bunsen or similar air-fed burner, to light so that the flame proceeds from the internal gas jet instead of from the external jet of mixed gas and air.

noun

back fire, backfire n.

A fire started ahead of a forest or prairie fire to burn only against the wind, so that when the two fires meet both must go out for lack of fuel.

(a)

A premature explosion in the cylinder of a gas or oil engine during the exhaust or the compression stroke, tending to drive the piston in a direction reverse to that in which it should travel; also called a knock or ping.

(b)

An explosion in the exhaust passages of an internal combustion engine.

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Etymology of 'Backfire'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Backfire" Quotes from Famous Books

... or points to an enduring solution of his problem. Suppression, while very often justified and necessary in the flux of human relationship, always carries a social cost which must be liquidated, and also a backfire danger which must be insured against. The human being is born with no innate proclivity to crime or special kind of unpatriotism. Crime and treason are habit-activities, educated into man by environmental influences favorable to ...

— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... the servants but the curse of the Indian Fakir. So with a sad smile he ordered his motor car and thought that he and his wife had better try the Railway refreshment rooms. When his chauffeur was going to start the engine Mr. Anderson expected that there would be a backfire and the chauffeur would have a dislocated wrist. But there was no accident. The engine started as smoothly as it had never done before. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson went to the Railway refreshment rooms. There they were informed that no tea was available. A dead rat had been found under one of the ...

— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji

... of material tighter in his hand, mentally trying to shape an order that wouldn't backfire, as such orders seemed to in the childhood stories of magic he had learned. Finally his lips whispered the simplest order he could find. "Rumpelstilsken, ...

— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey

... of the greater fuel economy of the diesel, and also because of the high specific gravity of fuel oil as compared to gasoline. Furthermore, these smaller tanks could be placed in more convenient locations. Not having a carburetor the engine could not backfire, further reducing the fire hazard. The exhaust note was lower because of the diesel's higher expansion ratio. The absence of an ignition system permitted the diesel to operate in the heaviest types of precipitation. Such conditions might cause the ignition system of a gasoline engine to ...

— The First Airplane Diesel Engine: Packard Model DR-980 of 1928 • Robert B. Meyer

... reason for bearing down hard on every form of genuine missionary work. It's the only thing that we Americans can do in Mexico with any hope of avoiding suspicion or of our presence being acceptable to the Mexicans in the long run. We've got to fight the backfire of our American commercialism, and the prejudice which is as real on the Texas side of the river as it is on the other; for if the Mexican thinks in terms of 'gringo,' the American of the Southwest is just as likely to think ...

— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt