Fired

How to spell fired

5 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce fired

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does fired mean?

1. verbDismissed someone from their employment.
2. verbDischarged a gun or launched a projectile.
3. verbHardened pottery or clay by baking it at high heat in a kiln.

Fired in a sentence

• The manager fired two staff members after the audit.

• The soldier fired three shots into the air as a warning.

• The bowls were fired at a very high temperature before glazing.

• He was fired for repeatedly arriving late.

• The cannon was fired at noon to mark the ceremony.

• She fired the ceramic tiles overnight in the studio kiln.

Where does fired come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word comes from the Old English fyr, meaning 'fire' as in the burning element, which traces back to a shared Germanic source and ultimately to an ancient root that distinguished fire as a thing from fire as a living force. As a verb, 'to fire' first meant simply 'to set alight' or 'to kindle', and the past form 'fired' recorded that action. From there the sense branched out vividly: gunpowder weapons were 'fired' because a flame ignited the charge, so 'fired' came to mean discharged or launched. The workplace meaning, to dismiss someone, grew later from the idea of throwing a worker out as one might fling something into the flames, and American English popularised it in the nineteenth century. The spelling is straightforward once you remember it is simply 'fire' with the regular '-ed' ending; the silent 'e' of fire is kept rather than dropped before the suffix in this written form.

How the word is built

• fire (root, from Old English fyr)
• -ed (past tense suffix)