take fire

verb

"take-fire" is a 8-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.

The verdict

“take fire” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a verb. The kind of spelling people second-guess.

Unranked
below top-frequency English
9
letters

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - To catch fire; to begin to burn.

Corpus desk

Index EN-take-fire · take fire · English

take fire · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables

  • FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
  • LEN-LONG 9 letters
  • VOW-4 4 vowels
  • CONFUS-0 No pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-THIN "T" thin
  • PHOTO-UNK Peer pending

Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Key facts for take fire
PropertyValue
Headwordtake fire
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechVerb
Letters9
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Long-tail rank of “take fire” in English

take firesits beyond the 100,000 most-frequent English words, in the long tail of technical, archaic, or otherwise rare vocabulary where spelling doubt tends to strike hardest.

Beyond rank #100,000. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Rare enough to double-check

take fire is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as averb. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 3 senses are on record.

No misspelling variants are generated for take fire in our index, since its letter sequence doesn't invite the usual edit-distance slips. It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.

No explicit etymology string is stored for this entry, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is take fire, spelled T-A-K-E- -F-I-R-E.

Definition

  1. 1
    To catch fire; to begin to burn.
  2. 2
    To become excited or enthused about something.
  3. 3
    To be subjected to enemy attack with firearms; to be under fire.

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how take fire appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. The unit was taking fire from the guerrillas.
  2. She took heavy fire from all quarters.

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "take fire"?
"take fire" is spelled T-A-K-E- -F-I-R-E.
What does "take fire" mean?
As a verb, "take fire" means: To catch fire; to begin to burn.
What language does "take fire" come from?
"take fire" is a English word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list