Bonfire

How to spell bonfire

7 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce bonfire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bonfire mean?

1. nounA large open-air fire built for celebration, ceremony, or to burn rubbish and garden waste.

Bonfire in a sentence

• The village lit a huge bonfire to mark the festival.

• We raked the dead leaves into a pile and built a bonfire at the bottom of the garden.

Where does bonfire come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Bonfire is a genuinely native English compound, and its origin is more grisly than most people expect. It began in late Middle English as 'banefyre' or 'bonefire', meaning literally a 'fire of bones', a large open blaze in which bones were burned, sometimes the bones of plague victims or slaughtered animals, and at other times the bones of heretics and saints during religious purges. The first element is simply 'bone', from Old English 'ban', and the second is 'fire', from Old English 'fyr'. Over the 1400s and 1500s the word broadened to mean any large outdoor fire built for celebration or to clear rubbish, and the connection to bones faded from memory. A persistent old folk story tried to derive it from the French 'bon' meaning 'good', as if it were a 'good fire', but that is mistaken; the spelling with a single 'n' is the only modern survivor of the original 'bone', which is exactly the spelling trap, since writers expect 'bone' to keep its 'e'.

How the word is built

• bon- (from 'bone', a fire of bones)
• fire (open blaze)