SET ON FIRE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does set on fire mean? 

• SET ON FIRE (verb)
  The verb SET ON FIRE has 1 sense:

1. set fire to; cause to start burning

  Familiarity information: SET ON FIRE used as a verb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SET ON FIRE (verb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Set fire to; cause to start burning

Classified under:

Verbs of raining, snowing, thawing, thundering

Synonyms:

set ablaze; set afire; set aflame; set on fire

Context example:

Lightening set fire to the forest

Hypernyms (to "set on fire" is one way to...):

burn; combust (cause to burn or combust)

"Set on fire" entails doing...:

ignite; light (cause to start burning; subject to fire or great heat)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

 Context examples 

For if, in its perihelion, it should approach within a certain degree of the sun (as by their calculations they have reason to dread) it will receive a degree of heat ten thousand times more intense than that of red hot glowing iron, and in its absence from the sun, carry a blazing tail ten hundred thousand and fourteen miles long, through which, if the earth should pass at the distance of one hundred thousand miles from the nucleus, or main body of the comet, it must in its passage be set on fire, and reduced to ashes: that the sun, daily spending its rays without any nutriment to supply them, will at last be wholly consumed and annihilated; which must be attended with the destruction of this earth, and of all the planets that receive their light from it.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)