fox-fire
English edit
Noun edit
- Alternative form of foxfire
- 1775 November 9, Henry L[arcom] Abbot, quoting Benjamin Gale, “Description of the American Turtle. [Dr. Benjamin Gale to Silas Deane, Esq., Killingsworth, Nov. 9, 1775.]”, in The Beginning of Modern Submarine Warfare, under Captain-Lieutenant David Bushnell, Sappers and Miners, Army of the Revolution. Being a Historical Compilation (Engineer School of Application, Willets Point, N[ew] Y[ork] H[arbor], Paper; no. III), New York, N.Y.: Printed on the Battalion Press, Sergt. Carmichael and Pvt. Beck, printers, published 1881, →OCLC, pages 176–177:
- On the inside is fixed a Barometer, by which he can tell the depth he is under water; a Compass, by which he knows the course he steers. In the barometer and on the needles of the compass is fixed fox-fire, i.e. wood that gives light in the dark.
- [1879], “B.” [pseudonym], “Groundless Fears”, in The Gift Book of Affection for the Young, London: James Blackwood and Co., […], →OCLC, chapter II, page 58:
- ["I]t won't burn our fingers, though, if we take it up. It is nothing but fox-fire. Humph! an old rotten stump:" and groping round for a stick, he struck it and knocked it all about, and wherever it lay it looked like burning coals.
- 1884 December 10, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XXXV, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade) […], London: Chatto & Windus, […], →OCLC, page 356:
- [...] Tom said we got to have some light to see how to dig by, and a lantern makes too much, and might get us into trouble; what we must have was a lot of them rotten chunks that's called fox-fire and just makes a soft kind of a glow when you lay them in a dark place.
- 1894 January 9, William Hamilton Gibson, “Foxfire”, in Harper’s Young People, volume XV, number 741, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 189, column 1:
- [Nathaniel] Hawthorne in one of his books records a remarkable personal encounter with this weird fox-fire, and one which cost him dearly. He was on a journey by canal-boat, which had stopped en route for a brief period at midnight. During the interval he had stepped ashore, and was decoyed into a neighboring wood by the bright glow, which proved to be a fallen tree ablaze with phosphorescence. In his surprise and interest he lost all account of time, and thus missed his boat, [...] Almost any damp woods, especially after a rain, is likely to disclose its fox-fire, but it occasionally appears under circumstances where we little expect it.