scarefire

English

Alternative forms

skarefire

Etymology

From scare +‎ fire. In some senses, alteration of scathefire.

Noun

scarefire (plural scarefires)

(obsolete) An alarm of fire.
(obsolete) A fire causing alarm.
- 1642, Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: […] Roger Daniel for John Williams, […], →OCLC:
  Scarefire of Purgatory
(obsolete) A house-burning; conflagration; scathefire.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “scarefire”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)