fire off

Idioms  

1. Say or write and send away rapidly, as in He fired off three more questions, or She fired off a letter of complaint to the president. This expression originally (from about 1700) was, and still is, used in the sense of “discharge a weapon or ammunition,” as in The police were instructed to fire off canisters of tear gas. The figurative use dates from the late 1800s.

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

fire off

A navy vessel and other ships rushed in Wednesday to rescue over 100 people from a ferry on fire off the tourist island of Bali, officials said, in the second such incident in days.

From Barron's ● Aug. 12, 2026

There must be no prep involved, so they can just show up to the set and fire off some lines, right?

From Salon ● Jul. 12, 2026

That’s all it took for the Seattle Storm’s Flau’jae Johnson to fire off a 27-foot three-point jumper to take the lead.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 7, 2026

An exercise to fire off a howitzer, an artillery weapon, was called off due to an extreme blizzard in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut.

From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2026

But the crew of a big warship didn’t just fire off one cannonball at a time.

From I Survived the American Revolution, 1776 by Lauren Tarshis

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