under fire

See also: underfire

English

under fire

Subjected to enemy attack with firearms.
- 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, OCLC 246633669, PC, scene: Turians: Military Doctrine Codex entry:
  Enlisted personnel are thoroughly trained and stay calm under fire. Turian units don't break. Even if their entire line collapses, they fall back in order, setting ambushes as they go.
(figuratively) Criticized or held responsible for something.
- 1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard:
  The clerk had, I'm afraid, a shrew of a wife—shrill, vehement, and fluent. […] He had learned, by long experience, the best tactique under fire: he became actually taciturn; or, if he spoke, his speech was laconic and enigmatical; sometimes throwing out a proverb, and sometimes a text; and sometimes when provoked past endurance, spouting mildly a little bit of meek and venomous irony.
- 2009, Michael O'Connor, Quadrant, November 2009, No. 461 (Volume LIII, Number 11), Quadrant Magazine Limited, page 2:
  Meanwhile, the government's own Human Services department is under fire from the Ombudsman for its failure to protect children in its care.
- 2020 June 3, Andrew Mourant, “A safer railway in a greener habitat”, in Rail, page 58:
  Over the past two years, particularly in 2018, Network Rail has come under fire about its approaches to trackside tree-felling across its 52,000-hectare estate. Conservationists accused it of wanton destruction.

subject to enemy attack with firearms

criticized for something