fire out
v. phr.— «More than 2,000 firefighters attacked the Esperanza fire on several fronts Friday, using bulldozers and hand crews to build containment lines. Planes dropped water and fire retardant and set back fires to burn the fuel before the fire advances, a process called “firing out.”» —“Tragic loss hits home” Press-Enterprise (Riverside, California) Oct. 28, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Janet in Montgomery, Alabama, reports that a day after she had surgery on her hand, the wound burst open, and a doctor noted that her wound dehisced. She’s used to hearing dehisce used in botany to mean the splitting of a plant structure to...
Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...