miss fire
English edit
Verb edit
miss fire (third-person singular simple present misses fire, present participle missing fire, simple past and past participle missed fire)
- Dated form of misfire.
- 1828, Timothy Flint, A Condensed Geography and History of the Western States:
- I took aim and drew the trigger, but the gun missed fire. The person hearing the noise instantly jerked back his head.
- 1835, William Greener, The gun; or, A treatise on the various descriptions of small fire-arms:
- The gun-makers say, that the guns would be continually missing fire, if larger grained powder were adopted. This would be no fault of the powder, but theirs. Why not make the chamber wider, up to the immediate vicinity of the point of ignition?
- 1943 January and February, Chas. S. Lake, “Some C.M.Es. I Have Known: IV—H. A. Ivatt”, in Railway Magazine, page 33:
- This was said in the spirit of a joke, but, as it turned out, it missed fire, as both the arrival and departure of the train were strictly in accordance with the schedule.