See light a fire under on Wiktionary
{ "etymology_text": "Referring to a time when, if chimney sweeps were afraid to ascend a chimney, the fire would be lit under them in order to motivate them to climb to the top.", "forms": [ { "form": "lights a fire under", "tags": [ "present", "singular", "third-person" ] }, { "form": "lighting a fire under", "tags": [ "participle", "present" ] }, { "form": "lit a fire under", "tags": [ "participle", "past" ] }, { "form": "lit a fire under", "tags": [ "past" ] } ], "head_templates": [ { "args": { "1": "light<,,lit> a fire under" }, "expansion": "light a fire under (third-person singular simple present lights a fire under, present participle lighting a fire under, simple past and past participle lit a fire under)", "name": "en-verb" } ], "lang": "English", "lang_code": "en", "pos": "verb", "senses": [ { "categories": [ { "kind": "other", "name": "English entries with incorrect language header", "parents": [], "source": "w" }, { "kind": "other", "name": "Pages with 1 entry", "parents": [], "source": "w" }, { "kind": "other", "name": "Pages with entries", "parents": [], "source": "w" } ], "examples": [ { "bold_text_offsets": [ [ 20, 38 ] ], "text": "Let me see if I can light a fire under the waiter to get our order sooner.", "type": "example" } ], "glosses": [ "To motivate or encourage (someone) to start sooner or move faster." ], "id": "en-light_a_fire_under-en-verb-7vrGwxH-", "links": [ [ "motivate", "motivate" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(idiomatic, transitive) To motivate or encourage (someone) to start sooner or move faster." ], "tags": [ "idiomatic", "transitive" ] } ], "sounds": [ { "audio": "En-au-light a fire under.ogg", "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg.mp3", "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg" } ], "word": "light a fire under" }
{ "etymology_text": "Referring to a time when, if chimney sweeps were afraid to ascend a chimney, the fire would be lit under them in order to motivate them to climb to the top.", "forms": [ { "form": "lights a fire under", "tags": [ "present", "singular", "third-person" ] }, { "form": "lighting a fire under", "tags": [ "participle", "present" ] }, { "form": "lit a fire under", "tags": [ "participle", "past" ] }, { "form": "lit a fire under", "tags": [ "past" ] } ], "head_templates": [ { "args": { "1": "light<,,lit> a fire under" }, "expansion": "light a fire under (third-person singular simple present lights a fire under, present participle lighting a fire under, simple past and past participle lit a fire under)", "name": "en-verb" } ], "lang": "English", "lang_code": "en", "pos": "verb", "senses": [ { "categories": [ "English entries with incorrect language header", "English idioms", "English lemmas", "English multiword terms", "English terms with usage examples", "English transitive verbs", "English verbs", "Pages with 1 entry", "Pages with entries" ], "examples": [ { "bold_text_offsets": [ [ 20, 38 ] ], "text": "Let me see if I can light a fire under the waiter to get our order sooner.", "type": "example" } ], "glosses": [ "To motivate or encourage (someone) to start sooner or move faster." ], "links": [ [ "motivate", "motivate" ] ], "raw_glosses": [ "(idiomatic, transitive) To motivate or encourage (someone) to start sooner or move faster." ], "tags": [ "idiomatic", "transitive" ] } ], "sounds": [ { "audio": "En-au-light a fire under.ogg", "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/7/72/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg.mp3", "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/72/En-au-light_a_fire_under.ogg" } ], "word": "light a fire under" }
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-06-01 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-05-20 using wiktextract (3dadd05 and f1c2b61). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.