Campfire

How to spell campfire

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce campfire

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does campfire mean?

1. nounAn open outdoor fire built at a camp for warmth, cooking, or light.

Campfire in a sentence

• The children toasted marshmallows over the campfire after dark.

• We sat around the campfire swapping stories late into the night.

Where does campfire come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is a transparent English compound that joins two old and familiar words. The first element, 'camp', came into English in the sixteenth century from the French 'camp' and ultimately the Latin 'campus', meaning 'a level field' or 'open ground', the kind of place where soldiers pitched their tents. The second element, 'fire', is a thoroughly native word descending from Old English 'fyr', a relative of similar words across the Germanic languages. The two were welded together as 'campfire' in the nineteenth century, particularly in American writing about frontier and outdoor life, to name the open fire built at a camp for warmth, cooking, and light. Because both halves are common everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the compound holds no real surprises for the modern speller.

How the word is built

• camp (an outdoor encampment)
• fire (a burning blaze)