BACKFIRE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Backfire

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/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.

See images of 'Backfire'

Etymology of 'Backfire'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"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