Wiktionary:Word of the day/November 5

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information From 2020, Word of the Day pages are in the format "Wiktionary:Word of the day/[year]/[month] [day]". This page, without a year in the title, is now used as a fallback if no Word of the Day has been set for this year, and generally should not need to be edited. However, if you wish to propose an amendment, please leave a message at Wiktionary:Beer parlour.
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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