Flaming
adj, name, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 An emission or application of fire; act of burning with flames.
"The burning is done before the crop has come up, and usually two flamings are necessary to kill all weeds […]"
- 2 the process of combustion of inflammable materials producing heat and light and (often) smoke wordnet
- 3 Sterilization by holding an object in a hot flame.
- 4 Vitriolic criticism. Internet
"You can expect a flaming if you post irrelevant spam to a newsgroup."
- 1 present participle and gerund of flame form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 On fire with visible flames.
"The flaming debris kept the firefighter well back, and the sparks threatened the neighborhood."
- 2 Very bright and the color of flame.
"In the evening she reveled in the flaming sunsets, with their spectacular orange glows that seemed to set the whole world on fire."
- 3 Extremely obvious; visibly evident. colloquial
"To call him a flaming homosexual would be an understatement, but I think he acts that way just to see people react."
- 4 Damned, bloody. Australia, British, colloquial
"I wasted three hours in that flaming traffic jam!"
- 5 Very enthusiastic or passionate.
"I hate it with a flaming passion!"
- 1 passionate or quick-tempered wordnet
- 2 informal intensifiers wordnet
- 1 A surname.
Example
More examples"First from a flint a spark Achates drew, / and lit the leaves and dry wood heaped with care / and set the fuel flaming, as he blew."
Etymology
From the German surname for someone from Flanders, from Middle High German vlaeminc, ultimately from Proto-Germanic *flaumaz. See Flanders, Fleming, and the variant Flemming.
Related phrases
More for "flaming"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.