Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A raging, rapidly spreading fire.
  • noun Something that acts very quickly and intensely.
  • noun Lightning occurring without audible thunder.
  • noun A luminosity that appears over swamps or marshes at night; ignis fatuus.
  • noun A highly flammable material, such as Greek fire, once used in warfare.
  • idiom (like wildfire) Rapidly and intensely.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A composition of inflammable materials readily catching fire and hard to be extinguished; Greek fire: often used figuratively.
  • noun Sheet-lightning; a kind of lightning unaccompanied by thunder.
  • noun The blue flames of alcohol burnt in some dishes when brought on table, as with plum-pudding.
  • noun In coal-mining, the name formerly sometimes given by miners to fire-damp.
  • noun Erysipelas; also, lichen circumseriptus, an eruptive disease, consisting of clusters or patches of papulæ.
  • noun A disease of sheep, attended with inflammation of the skin.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A composition of inflammable materials, which, kindled, is very hard to quench; Greek fire.
  • noun An old name for erysipelas.
  • noun A disease of sheep, attended with inflammation of the skin.
  • noun rare A sort of lightning unaccompanied by thunder.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A rapidly spreading fire, especially one occurring in a wildland area.
  • noun historical Greek fire, Byzantine fire.
  • noun A spreading disease of the skin, particularly erysipelas.
  • noun figuratively Something that acts quickly and uncontrollably.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a raging and rapidly spreading conflagration

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Wild + fire. In the Middle Ages, the term referred to Greek fire.

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Examples

Comments

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  • This can also be used as a weapon, as in the case of the battle of King's Landing.

    June 26, 2012