different between bushfire vs brushfire

English

Alternative forms

• bush fire

Etymology

From bush +? fire.

Pronunciation

Noun

bushfire (plural bushfires)

1. (Australia) An uncontrolled fire in a wooded or grassy area; a wildfire.
   • 1985, Australian House of Representatives, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, Weekly Hansard, Issues 4-6, page 1322,

     Many homes, a great deal of property and a number of lives were lost as a result of the bushfires in this country.

   • 2011, Tracey Dickson, Tonia Gray, Risk Management in the Outdoors: A Whole-of-Organisation Approach for Education, Sport and Recreation, page 199,

     It should also be kept in mind that often bushfires start and move quickly and the information relating to their location and activity may take some time to assemble and make available.

   • 2011, Larry Writer, The Australian Book of Disasters, unnumbered page,

     The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of apocalyptic blazes that burned on – and for some weeks after – Saturday, 7 February 2009. As a result of the bushfires, 173 people died. It was the nation?s largest loss of life from a bushfire event, and 414 people were injured.

Synonyms

• (uncontrolled fire in a wooded area): forest fire, wildfire (US)

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