Underfiring
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Intentional operation of a boiler, furnace, oven, etc., at a low level. uncountable
"The designer believes that by this combination of a combustion-chamber with the underfiring grate the combustion of the fuel is improved."
- 2 The state of not burning fuel at the desired level, and thus not providing heat efficiently. uncountable
"In natural gas-fired boilers, gas pressure is critical to proper burner operation and efficient combustion. Variations in gas pressure may cause over- or underfiring of the boiler. […] Underfiring may cause flame instability and poor combustion efficiency due to high levels of excess air."
- 3 Heating from below. also, attributive, uncountable
"[W]hile there were fully as many under-firing as tube-firing boilers, at work, the majority of explosions took place in boilers of the latter class, and they almost invariably commenced with the collapse of the fire flue."
- 4 The state of being insufficiently fired or underfired. uncountable
"Hence it is, I must suppose, that while more effects could be produced with rose if one could only be sure of the fire, yet carmine is the more serviceable, as one is at so much less risk of loss from overfiring, which is more common than underfiring."
- 1 present participle and gerund of underfire form-of, gerund, participle, present
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The designer believes that by this combination of a combustion-chamber with the underfiring grate the combustion of the fuel is improved."
Etymology
From under- (prefix meaning ‘beneath; insufficient’) + firing, or underfire + -ing (suffix forming nouns from verbs denoting the act of doing something, an action, or the embodiment of an action).
From underfire + -ing (suffix forming present participles of verbs).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.