Firefighting Slang, Jargon, and New Words from Double-Tongued Dictionary

Citations in the Category Firefighting

Firemen, fire-fighters, fire departments, sappers, hooks and ladders, fire-jumpers, helitack, wildfires, etc. You can also see entries assigned to this category.

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escape fire n. Wag Dodge, saw that it wasn’t going to work. So he stopped, took out some matches, and set the tall dry grass ahead of him on fire. The new blaze caught and rapidly spread up the slope. He stepped into the middle of the burned-out area it left behind, lay down, and called out to his crew to join him. He had invented what came to be called an “escape fire,” and it later became a standard part of Forest Service fire training. [English Firefighting] [full cite] (Nov. 29, 2004)

fire out v. phr. More than 2,000 firefighters attacked the Esperanza fire on several fronts Friday, using bulldozers and hand crews to build containment lines. Planes dropped water and fire retardant and set back fires to burn the fuel before the fire advances, a process called “firing out.” [English Firefighting Jargon] [full cite] (Oct. 31, 2006)

fireline cord n. Martie Schramm, a spokesman for the firefighting effort, said the explosive teams lay what’s called a fireline cord along areas where a 1999 storm left piles of dead wood. The cord blasts the wood into tiny shards and slivers. Then, the team turns over the earth, which brings the added benefit of fertilizing the soil. “Essentially what it does is annihilate the blowdown fuel that we want to get rid of,” Schramm said. “It also leaves behind less of a human imprint than if we were using chain saws to get rid of that stuff.” [English Firefighting Jargon] [full cite] (Jul. 31, 2006)

firemedic n. The role of firefighter—or firemedic, as they are called in Venice—has changed, and Johnson, whose last day as fire chief is Monday, hopes he has led the department in the right direction. [English Firefighting Medical] [full cite] (Nov. 1, 2006)

gasoline siding n. The wood-frame home, which is adjacent to Vale Park on the south side of Eastern Avenue, also has what firefighters euphemistically call “gasoline siding"—a petroleum-based imitation brick that feeds the flames. [Construction & Buildings Firefighting Slang] [full cite] (Aug. 19, 2008)

ghosted adj. The marshals got to the ground floor, where the fire had been hottest and raged the longest. Every step of the stairwell and each railing and inch of banister was alligatored. Parts of the wall were “ghosted,” fire parlance for places where fire burns so strong that it erases its own soot, leaving raw, bleached patches of brick. [English Firefighting] [full cite] (Mar. 10, 2007)

Habitrail house n. Carl Kietzke of Seattle, the president of the International Fire Buffs Associates, said that up and down the West Coast he had heard the phrase “Habitrail house,” referring to buildings there that firefighters have likened to rambling, unkempt rodent cages. [English Firefighting Slang] [full cite] (Jul. 5, 2006)

hat catcher n. His interest in the fire department was another thing Elmore Tonini shared with his father: Both were well-known “hat catchers”—a term for a fan of the fire department. [English Firefighting Slang] [full cite] (May. 31, 2007)

heli-donna n. Helitack crews consider themselves an elite corps within the fire service, which prompts a certain amount of ribbing from their fellow firefighters—most of it good-natured, some of it not. In conversations and on Internet message boards, they hear themselves referred to as “rotorheads” and “heli-donnas.” [English United States Firefighting Jargon] [full cite] (Nov. 16, 2004)

heli-stepping n. Just dropping off the crew can be risky. The pilot might have to hold the Super Huey on one of its two landing skids against the side of mountain. Other times, the pilot hovers just above the top of the brush and the firefighters jump out. They call that “heli-stepping.” [English United States Aviation Firefighting Jargon] [full cite] (Nov. 16, 2004)

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