Firebreak

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An area cleared of all flammable material to prevent a fire from spreading across it.

    "The firefighters used a bulldozer to clear a firebreak in the forest to try to contain the forest fire."

  2. 2
    a narrow field that has been cleared to check the spread of a prairie fire or forest fire wordnet
  3. 3
    Any separating barrier. figuratively

    "That policy could consist of a statement that the declaring nation would not be the first to use nuclear weapons. This would strengthen the firebreak between the use of conventional and nuclear weapons."

Synonyms

All synonyms
fireguardfiretrail

Example

More examples

"The firefighters used a bulldozer to clear a firebreak in the forest to try to contain the forest fire."

Etymology

From fire + break.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.