fire engine

• (UK, General Australian) IPA^(key): /faɪə(ɹ).ɛn.dʒɪn/
• (US) enPR: fīər ĕn jĭn IPA^(key): /faɪɚ.ɛn.dʒɪn/

fire engine (plural fire engines)

A fire engine in Iraq

1. (firefighting) A vehicle used by firefighters to pump water to fight a fire. Typically, a fire engine carries a supply of water and has the ability to connect to an external water supply.
2. (archaic) Any fire apparatus, such as the pumping apparatus on a fire boat.
   • 1844, William Pole, A Treatise on the Cornish Pumping Engine - Parts 1-3, page 110:

     A plan somewhat similar to this was adopted by Smeaton in the boiler of his portable fire engine.

   • 1866, Charles Frederick T. Young, Fires, Fire Engines, and Fire Brigades: With a History of Manual and Steam Fire Engines, page 93:

     In the same year a very compact arrangement for a stationary fire engine was described by Mr. Wm. Baddeley, in which he proposed it should be worked like a capstan by means of handspikes, and it could be bolted down to a ship's deck, or fastened wherever wanted.

   • 1868, John Bourne, A Treatise on the Steam-engine in Its Various Applications to Mines, Mills, Steam Navigation, Railways, and Agriculture, page 4:

     This discovery gave a great impulse to mechanical ingenuity, and many schemes were contrived to make this new agent available as a motive power; but the first of these projects that appears to have been of any avail was the fire engine of Captain Tomas Savery, who produced a vacuum by condensing steam in close vessels, and then applied the vaccuum so obtained to the elevation of water.

• fire engine red

• fire engine in The Century Dictionary, The Century Co., New York, 1911
• fire engine at OneLook Dictionary Search