Firing

How to spell firing

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce firing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does firing mean?

1. nounThe act of discharging a gun or other weapon.
2. nounThe act of dismissing someone from a job.
3. nounThe process of hardening pottery or bricks by heating them in a kiln.

Firing in a sentence

• Residents reported the firing of guns late at night.

• The sudden firing of the manager shocked the whole office.

• The firing of the clay pots takes several hours at high heat.

• The soldiers waited for the order before firing a single round.

• Poor sales figures led to the firing of three executives.

• A flaw appeared during the firing of the ceramic glaze.

Where does firing come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The base word fire descends from the Old English noun 'fyr', meaning the flames and heat of combustion, which itself grew out of a Proto-Germanic word shared with Dutch 'vuur' and German 'Feuer'. The verb sense, 'to set alight', led naturally to 'to discharge a gun', because early firearms were literally set off by applying flame to gunpowder. The form 'firing' is simply that verb with the present participle and gerund ending -ing, and English spelling rules require dropping the silent final 'e' of fire before adding the suffix, which is the small trap here: writers sometimes wrongly keep the 'e' and produce 'fireing'. Over time 'firing' took on several settled meanings of its own, from the firing of clay in a kiln to the slang sense of dismissing someone from a job, a usage that became common in American English in the late nineteenth century. The thread running through all of them is the original image of heat and ignition.

How the word is built

• fire (Old English fyr, 'fire')
• -ing (present participle / gerund suffix); note the silent 'e' of fire is dropped before -ing