afire

a- +‎ fire

afire (comparative more afire, superlative most afire)

1. On fire (often metaphorically).
   • c. 1611, William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act I, Scene 2:

     […] All but mariners

     Plunged in the foaming brine and quit the vessel,

     Then all afire with me: the king’s son, Ferdinand,

     With hair up-staring,—then like reeds, not hair,—

     Was the first man that leap’d; cried, ‘Hell is empty

     And all the devils are here.’

   • 1856, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh, New York: C.S. Francis & Co., 1857, Seventh Book, p. 275:

     […] Earth’s crammed with heaven,

     And every common bush afire with God:

   • 1922, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Chessmen of Mars‎, HTML edition, The Gutenberg Project, published 2010:

     … if I were a young man I should doubtless be willing to set all Barsoom afire to win you,…

   • 1931, Nacio Herb Brown and Gordon Clifford, “Paradise” (song first sung by Pola Negri and later covered by Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra):

     Her eyes afire

     With one desire.

     Then a heavenly kiss:

     Could I resist?

   • 1950, Mervyn Peake, Gormenghast, London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, Chapter 63:

     Old claw-like hands, cracked with long years of thankless toil, would hold aloft a delicate bird of wood, its wings, as thin as paper, spread for flight, its breast afire with a crimson stain.

• ablaze
• aflame

• Arfie, Feria, Freia, faire, feria, rafie