fire-eater

fire-eater

See also: fireeater, fire eater, and Fire-Eater

English

Alternative forms

• fire eater, fireeater

Noun

fire-eater (plural fire-eaters)

1. A performer who pretends to swallow fire.
2. (figuratively) A quarrelsome or belligerent person.
   • Burt L. Standish (Gilbert Patten)

     "But he is a regular fire eater!"
     "He's a bad man—a blamed bad man!" fluttered Danny Griswold.
     "That's right," nodded Lewis Little. "He really wants to fight with swords, I believe."

3. (US, historical) An extreme partisan for the South before the US Civil War.
   • 1988, James McPherson, Battle Cry for Freedom, Oxford 2003, p. 103:

     Frustrated in their attempts to change the law, fire-eaters turned their efforts to breaking it.

Related terms

• fire-eating

Translations

performer

Afrikaans: vuureter Arabic: آكِل اَلنَّار‎ (ʾākil an-nār) Finnish: tulennielijä (fi) French: mangeur de feu, cracheur de feu (fr) German: Feuerschlucker (de) m Hebrew: רוֹשֵׁף‎ (he) m (roshéf) Kurdish: Northern Kurdish: agirbaz (ku) c Swedish: eldslukare c

quarrelsome or belligerent person

Finnish: riitapukari

extreme partisan for the South