verb ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb

1. 1
   To have the intended effect.

   "Talking of backfire, frontfire or whatever, John Carroll can give it both barrels, and simultaneously."

Example

More examples

"Talking of backfire, frontfire or whatever, John Carroll can give it both barrels, and simultaneously."

Etymology

From front + fire, coined as an opposite for backfire (and not usually seen without it).

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