wildfire

American  

[wahyld-fahy^uhr] / ˈwaɪldˌfaɪər /

noun

• wildfires
  plural

1. any large fire in brush, forests, or open spaces that spreads rapidly and is hard to extinguish.

2. a highly flammable composition, such as Greek fire, difficult to extinguish when ignited, formerly used in warfare.

3. sheet lightning, unaccompanied by thunder.

4. the ignis fatuus or a similar light.

5. Plant Pathology. a disease of tobacco and soybeans, characterized by brown, necrotic spots, each surrounded by a yellow band, on the leaves and caused by the bacterium Pseudomonas tabaci.

6. Pathology Obsolete. erysipelas or some similar disease.

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wildfire British  

/ ˈwaɪldˌfaɪə /

noun

1. a highly flammable material, such as Greek fire, formerly used in warfare

2. 1. a raging and uncontrollable fire

   2. anything that is disseminated quickly (esp in the phrase spread like wildfire )

3. lightning without audible thunder

4. another name for will-o'-the-wisp

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wildfire Idioms  

1. see spread like wildfire.

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• wildfires
  plural

Etymology

Origin of wildfire

First recorded before 1000; Middle English wildefire, Old English wildfȳr; equivalent to wild + fire

Explanation

A wildfire is an uncontrolled blaze, especially one that ignites rural areas with a lot of trees and dry brush. Factors like drought, unusually warm weather, and development can contribute to bigger wildfires. Wildfires are a natural part of many forest lifecycles, but human activity and climate change have made these conflagrations more frequent and dangerous. Unextinguished campfires, lightning strikes, and power lines can all ignite a fire that spreads and becomes a wildfire, given dry enough conditions. The biggest U.S. wildfire, which burned acres of the Santa Fe National Forest in New Mexico, devastated an area larger than New York City. In Old English, a wildfire was a wilde fyr.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

wildfire wildfires

The agency encourages property owners to remove certain trees around homes for defensible-space purposes and works to thin forests throughout the Tahoe Basin to reduce wildfire risk.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026

Volcanic ash and wildfire smoke have different particle properties, travel through the atmosphere in different ways, and require different protective measures.

From Science Daily ● Sep. 18, 2026

A wildfire that destroys energy generation facilities during a significant heat wave, for example, could cause enough capacity loss to generate the use of these tools, said Ackemann.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 11, 2026

While weather has cooled across much of the UK in recent days following record-breaking heat over the summer, fire crews have still been warning of wildfire risks.

From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2026

The wildfire seems like a monster from another life.

From "Paradise on Fire" by Jewell Parker Rhodes

While some insurers are charging higher premiums, others are dropping condo HOAs and their owners altogether due to rising losses from natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires, and increasing reinsurance costs.

From MarketWatch ● Sep. 18, 2026

This year’s El Niño has set off wildfires in Asia, hurricanes in the Pacific and fishery closures in South America.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 18, 2026

In the aftermath of 2025 wildfires, there was heavy criticism about delayed emergency notifications and evacuation orders.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 17, 2026

LA local news stations regularly break into live programming to broadcast high-speed police pursuits from the air, fly over wildfires and show accidents, protests, and holiday traffic jams in often unscripted, real-time aerials.

From BBC ● Sep. 16, 2026

He watched the growth of the trees and felt wildfires burning across the landscape, experienced lightning strikes on the granite domes, and suffered the slow inevitable advancement of glacial ice.

From "The Reader" by Traci Chee

Related Words

• blaze
• conflagration
• flare
• flash
• light
• spark