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Catch fire   /kætʃ fˈaɪər/   Listen
Catch fire

verb
1.
Start to burn or burst into flames.  Synonyms: combust, conflagrate, erupt, ignite, take fire.  "The oily rags combusted spontaneously"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Catch fire" Quotes from Famous Books



... falling into desuetude, for the relatives of the dead to launch toy vessels made of straw laden with fruit and coins as well as a lantern. These toy ships have toy sails, and the dead are supposed to sail in them to oblivion until next year's festival. These toy ships, of course, catch fire from the lanterns. Not so very many years ago the spectacle of these little vessels catching fire on some large bay was a very pretty one. I am afraid this feast has a tendency to die out—a fact which is greatly ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... relation to that world of which Jesus here speaks a contrast rather than a parallel to His? The 'prince of this world' had nothing in Christ, as He himself declared, but He has much in each of us. There are stored up heaps of combustibles in every one of us which catch fire only too swiftly, and burn but too fiercely, when the 'fiery darts of the wicked' fall among them. Instead of an instinctive recoil from the view of life characteristic of 'the world,' we must confess, if we are honest, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... seemed gritty dust. The air was full of the stuff, it got into our eyes, half blinding us. The engine of the express had turned a complete somersault. It vomited forth smoke, and steam, and flames,—every moment it seemed as if the woodwork of the carriages immediately behind and beneath would catch fire. ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh

... female traveling alone—adventures that even in the telling frighten ladies whose nervousness for their safety seems to increase in direct proportion to the degree of tranquillity their charms create in the male bosom. She decided it would be unwise regularly to undress; the boat might catch fire or blow up or something. She took off skirt, hat and ties, loosened her waist, and lay upon the lower of the two plain, hard little berths. The throb of the engines, the beat of the huge paddles, made the whole boat tremble and shiver. Faintly up from below ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... lost?" asked Uncle Tad, as he began to shake the ashes out of the cook stove, getting ready to make a new fire in it. The stove pipe went right out through the tent, with an asbestos collar around it so the canvas would not catch fire. ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Big Woods • Laura Lee Hope

... surveys its un-English habits and constitution with sympathetic contempt. The patriotism of Tennyson is sober rather than glowing; it is meditative rather than enthusiastic. Occasionally indeed, his words catch fire, and the verse leaps onward with a sound of triumph, as in such a poem as The Charge of the Light Brigade or in such a glorious ballad as The Revenge. Neither of these poems is likely to perish until the glory ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson

... tie-up for your life!" exclaimed McCloud, reaching for the message. "How could it catch fire? Is ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman



Words linked to "Catch fire" :   take fire, catch, blow out, conflagrate, change state, turn, light up, burn, combust, ignite



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