brushfire

English

Etymology

brush +‎ fire

Noun

brushfire (plural brushfires)

1. A large fire in a scrubland or prairie, as opposed to a forest fire, which happens in forests.
2. (politics, attributive) A war that does not directly involve the world's superpowers.
   • 1958, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Ways and Means. Subcommittee on Foreign Trade Policy, Foreign Trade Policy: Hearings, Eighty-fifth Congress, page 651:

     It may be a brushfire operation or an operation on the scale of the Korean war; it will certainly not involve the home territories of the United States and Soviet Russia as theaters of hostilities.

   • 1959, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Appropriations, Financial statements of field commanders, page 251:

     I grant you it may not be in the actual application of mechanical devices, but if you have the volume to have supremacy in a major war it is obvious you would have the volume to take care of a brushfire war.

   • 1963, Philip Van Slyck, Peace: the Control of National Power, page 14:

     If a brushfire conflict does threaten superpower interests, or the general peace, a superpower may intervene in an unusual way.

Alternative forms

• brush fire
• brush-fire

Anagrams

• furbisher, refurbish