fireweed
noun
fireweed is a noun meaning “A perennial herbaceous plant (Epilobium angustifolium or Chamaenerion angustifolium) in the willowherb family Onagraceae” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled F-I-R-E-W-E-E-D and has 3 syllables, and it appears about once in every 23 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of fireweed is fireweeds.
What does fireweed mean?
noun
- 1
A perennial herbaceous plant (Epilobium angustifolium or Chamaenerion angustifolium) in the willowherb family Onagraceae.
- 2
Any of the flowering plants of the genus Erechtites.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce fireweed?
Fireweed has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of fireweed
- fireweeds plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is fireweed?
Fireweed appears about once in every 23 million words in written English, the 146,811th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Fireweed in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense Epilobium angustifolium:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | épilobe à feuille étroite |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does fireweed come from?
From fire + weed. The fire-part may be of same origin as eld-part in dialectal Norwegian Nynorsk eldmerke (“fireweed”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).