Library / English Dictionary

KINDLING

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

The act of setting something on fire

Synonyms:

firing; ignition; inflammation; kindling; lighting

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Hypernyms ("kindling" is a kind of...):

burning; combustion (the act of burning something)

Derivation:

kindle (catch fire)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Material for starting a fire

Synonyms:

kindling; punk; spunk; tinder; touchwood

Classified under:

Nouns denoting substances

Hypernyms ("kindling" is a kind of...):

igniter; ignitor; lighter (a substance used to ignite or kindle a fire)

Derivation:

kindle (catch fire)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

-ing form of the verb kindle

Credits

 Context examples: 

I have noted your absent mind, your kindling eye, your trying and riveting of old harness.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

"After a youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love—I have found you. You are my sympathy—my better self—my good angel. I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you, and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

There was a light in the porter's lodge: when we reached it, we found the porter's wife just kindling her fire: my trunk, which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened, with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I hurried on.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)