burner

plural burners

1. Someone or something that physically burns or causes something else to burn.
   1. An element on a kitchen stove, hob, or cooktop that generates localized heat for cooking.

      She lit a burner on the stove / And offered me a pipe / "I thought you'd never say hello", she said / "You look like the silent type"

      1975, Bob Dylan, “Tangled Up in Blue”, in Blood on the Tracks

      Synonyms: eye, ring

   2. chemistryA device that generates localized heat for experiments; a Bunsen burner.
   3. A device that burns fuel; e.g. a diesel engine; a hot-air balloon's propulsion system.
   4. A device for burning refuse; an incinerator.
2. computingA device that records data or music to an optical disc, such as a CD-R or DVD-RW.
3. abbreviationellipsisslangEllipsis of burner phone, a mobile phone used for only a short time and then thrown away so that the owner cannot be traced.

   No one on the corner has swagger like us / Hit me on my burner prepaid wireless

   2007, “Paper Planes”, in Kala, performed by M.I.A.

4. computingAn app that creates temporary phone numbers for a user.
5. InternetabbreviationellipsisslangEllipsis of burner account.

   Internet sleuths later discovered that the username, @SO_blessed1, appeared to be a burner belonging to the Twitter user Incarcerated Bob, who had long been spreading false information.

   2021 June 8, Andy Martino, Cheated: The Inside Story of the Astros Scandal and a Colorful History of Sign Stealing, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, →ISBN, →LCCN

6. slangAn elaborate piece of graffiti.

   There is a hierarchy of sorts: a throw-up can go over a tag, a piece over a throw-up, and a burner over a piece.

   2011, Scape Martinez, Graff 2: Next Level Graffiti Techniques, page 124

   1 more example

   […] we were doing productions, burners like 100 feet long and as tall as we could get, standing on people's shoulders, […]

   2011, Adam Melnyk, Visual Orgasm: The Early Years of Canadian Graffiti, page 84

7. slangA pyrotechnic tear gas canister.
8. slangA handgun.
9. abbreviationellipsisslangEllipsis of coal burner (“a nonblack person, usually a woman, who has sexual relationships with black people, usually men”).
10. slangAlternative letter-case form of Burner (“participant in Burning Man”).

    In Mississippi, Tom turned an encampment of do-gooder burners into an organization he dubbed Burners Without Borders.

    2011, Steven T. Jones, The Tribes of Burning Man

    2 more examples

    White Ocean, co-founded by entrepreneurs Timur Sardarov, the son of a Russian oil magnate, and Oliver Ripley, and involving the trance DJ Paul Oakenfold, is viewed as one such camp, although it provides one of Burning Man’s biggest stages and claims to “feed hundreds of non-White Ocean burners a day”.

    2016 September 5, Damien Gayle, “Luxury camp at Burning Man festival targeted by 'hooligans'”, in The Guardian

    Tens of thousands of “burners” at the Burning Man festival have been told to stay in the camps, conserve food and water and are being blocked from leaving Nevada’s Black Rock desert after a slow-moving rainstorm turned the event into a mud bath.

    2023 September 3, Edward Helmore, “Burning Man festival-goers trapped in desert as rain turns site to mud”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

plural Burners · alternative burner

1. A participant in the Burning Man festival.