fire engine

plural fire engines

1. firefightingA vehicle used by firefighters to pump water to fight a fire. Typically, a fire engine carries a supply of water and has the ability to connect to an external water supply.

   Near-synonyms: fire truck (usually synonymous in current usage); fire appliance; water engine (formerly synonymous)

   2 more examples

   Heading home from a party, two hipsters, completely stoned, pause to snuggle on a park bench. A fire engine roars by, bells clanging, sirens screaming. The boy flips. “Solid, doll,” he murmurs, “they’re playing our song!”

   1952 September 29, “"BOP VOCABULARY" section, inside of "That Crazy Bop Joke Craze"”, in LIFE Magazine, New York, U.S., page 69

   A fire aboard TfW 175007, working a Holyhead-Cardiff Central service on February 8, closed the A483 road while five fire engines from Wrexham, Deeside, and Cheshire attended the scene.

   2023 March 22, “Network News: Class 175s withdrawn for safety checks after fires”, in RAIL, number 979, page 13

   Synonyms: fire truck, fire appliance, water engine

2. archaicA steam engine.

   A plan somewhat similar to this was adopted by Smeaton in the boiler of his portable fire engine.

   1844, William Pole, A Treatise on the Cornish Pumping Engine - Parts 1-3, page 110

   2 more examples

   In the same year a very compact arrangement for a stationary fire engine was described by Mr. Wm. Baddeley, in which he proposed it should be worked like a capstan by means of handspikes, and it could be bolted down to a ship's deck, or fastened wherever wanted.

   1866, Charles Frederick T. Young, Fires, Fire Engines, and Fire Brigades: With a History of Manual and Steam Fire Engines, page 93

   This discovery gave a great impulse to mechanical ingenuity, and many schemes were contrived to make this new agent available as a motive power; but the first of these projects that appears to have been of any avail was the fire engine of Captain Tomas Savery, who produced a vacuum by condensing steam in close vessels, and then applied the vacuum so obtained to the elevation of water.

   1868, John Bourne, A Treatise on the Steam-engine in Its Various Applications to Mines, Mills, Steam Navigation, Railways, and Agriculture, page 4