Log in or Sign up

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Any of various large motor vehicles that carry firefighters and equipment to a fire and support extinguishing operations, as by pumping water. Also called fire truck.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. An early name for the steam-engine.
  2. n. An engine designed to throw a continuous stream of water through a hose upon a conflagration, for the purpose of extinguishing it. Fire-engines are of three principal kinds: hand-power, steam, and chemical, according to the power employed. Hand-power fire-engines consist in the main of a pair of single-acting force-pumps, mounted on wheels, and worked by hand. They have been generally superseded by the application of steam. Steam fire-engines consist essentially of a pair of single-acting suction- and force-pumps operated by steam, the whole apparatus being mounted on wheels and drawn by horses, or sometimes self-propelled. The chemical fire-engine is a large form of fire-extinguisher mounted on wheels and drawn by horses. Floating fire-boats and steam fire-engines are used in large ports, for the protection of shipping and the water-fronts.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A fire truck; a hook-n-ladder; a vehicle that firefighters use to move water and equipment to the location of a fire.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. a portable forcing pump, usually on wheels, for throwing water to extinguish fire.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. any of various large trucks that carry firemen and equipment to the site of a fire

Examples

  • “As that old hen boiled merrily away on the hot plate and the kids were cuddled down asleep on their table-bed, we put toys under the branch—two cars, two trucks, a fire engine and a red and yellow train.”

    Simon & Schuster: CSS: Christmas Cheer

  • “The fire engine had been invented by Newcomen early in the century; this was the model that pumped water out of the Kingswood mines and drove the water wheels in William Champion’s copper and brass works on the Avon adjacent to the coal.”

    Simon & Schuster: Morgan’s Run

  • “Wasborough had come up with a system of pulleys and a fly wheel, Pickard had invented the crank, and together these three new concepts converted the reciprocal motion of a fire engine into circular motion.”

    Simon & Schuster: Morgan’s Run

  • “Directly below us in the street the first fire engine had stopped, two firemen running with a hose toward a hydrant, another uncoupling the horses.”

    Time and Again

Comments

No comments yet...

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.

‘fire engine’ has been looked up 452 times, added to 4 lists, and is not a valid Scrabble word.