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Wiktionary:Word of the day/2022/November 5

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Word of the day
for November 5
bonfire n
  1. A large, controlled outdoor fire lit to celebrate something or as a signal.
  2. A fire lit outdoors to burn unwanted items; originally (historical), heretics or other offenders, or banned books; now, generally agricultural or garden waste, or rubbish.
  3. (figuratively) Something like a bonfire (sense 1 or 2) in heat, destructiveness, ferocity, etc.
  4. (obsolete) A fire lit to cremate a dead body; a funeral pyre.

bonfire v

  1. (transitive)
    1. To destroy (something) by, or as if by, burning on a bonfire; (more generally) to burn or set alight.
    2. (ceramics) To fire (pottery) using a bonfire.
    3. (obsolete) To start a bonfire in (a place); to light up (a place) with a bonfire.
  2. (intransitive, rare) To make, or celebrate around, a bonfire.

Today is Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night in Great Britain, on which effigies of Guy Fawkes are often burned on bonfires to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot to assassinate King James I in 1605.

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