{
  "id": "fire.combustion",
  "term": "fire",
  "sense": "combustion",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 21,
  "arena": "common",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a process where matter transforms energy into heat and light",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "matter.substance",
      "energy.capacity",
      "change.process",
      "heat.thermal",
      "light.visual"
    ],
    "interaction": "matter and energy interact through change, emitting heat and light as byproducts of transformation.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "emission of thermal energy",
      "emission of visible light",
      "sustained exothermic reaction"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2020 Gospers Mountain fire in Australia burned 500,000 hectares over 74 days, releasing stored chemical energy from eucalyptus biomass.",
      "domain": "ecology"
    },
    {
      "text": "A Bunsen burner in a Paris laboratory on June 5, 1857, ignited methane from the city gas line, producing a blue flame at 1,200°C.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "Lightning struck a dry redwood in California’s Sequoia National Park on August 16, 2021, igniting the KNP Complex fire.",
      "domain": "meteorology"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "energy.capacity",
      "type": "enables",
      "note": "fire releases stored energy"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "fire",
    "fired",
    "fires",
    "firing"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6,
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "factual",
      "note": "Original definition incorrectly described matter 'changing energy' rather than transforming energy; corrected to reflect that combustion is a process of energy transformation from matter, producing he"
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-fire.combustion"
}