Bonfires

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A large, controlled outdoor fire made to celebrate an event or to burn unwanted materials
2. An extensive open-air blaze used during festivities or for disposing of rubbish outdoors
3. A significant outdoor fire set purposely for ceremonies or to clear debris by burning

Etymology: The most surprising thing about "bonfire" is that it has almost nothing to do with bones. The Middle English form "bonnefyre" looks like "bone" plus "fire" on the surface, and that is how the name reads, but the word was a later reshaping of "bale-fyre," from Old English "bǣlfȳr," which meant a funeral or signal fire. The "bone" spelling took over through a kind of folk reanalysis, a process by which speakers reshape an unfamiliar word into one they already recognize. The midsummer fires that gave the word its later sense were not usually bone fires, though the Oxford English Dictionary records one exception. In the Scottish burgh of Hawick, old bones were collected and stored for the midsummer "banefire" down to about 1800, a sign that the bone association was once a local custom rather than the word's origin. A Scottish form, "banefire," shows the same sense of a fire lit for festivity or ritual.

Synonyms: campfires, outdoor fires, fires, blazes, conflagrations