flaming
part of speech
adjective (flaming; before nouns in the swearing sense); adverb (flaming — slang intensifier); verb form (flame, flames, flamed, flaming)
meaning for a pupil
1) (mild swearing, mainly UK, Ireland, Australia) a softer stand-in for «bloody» to show annoyance: «that flaming dog». tree →
2) (literal) burning with flames: «a flaming torch». tree →
3) bright red or orange like fire: «flaming red hair». tree →
4) very angry or violent: «a flaming row». tree →
5) (internet) sending angry, insulting messages online. tree →
sense in the lessons
In everyday British and Australian talk «flaming» is a gentle swear word that lets people show anger without being too rude; it is old-fashioned and can sound comic. The literal fire sense is common in stories and science; the internet sense in safety lessons.
examples
- Turn that flaming telly off! tree →
- Where are my flaming keys? tree →
- The knight carried a flaming torch into the cave. tree →
- She has flaming red hair. tree →
- They had a flaming row about the washing-up. tree →
- The flaming sun set behind the hills. tree →
- Flaming heck, it's cold out here! tree →
- Our online-safety lesson said flaming other users is a form of bullying. tree →
- At first it was quite dark, and the flaming torch only lit up dirty grey stone walls. tree →
note
Trap: «flaming» before a noun can mean annoying (swearing) or literally on fire; check the context. As swearing it is mild but not for school work. Plain word in the swearing sense: annoying, damn. In science, «flaming» means producing flames.
In the corpora
- Who makest winds Thy messengers, the flaming fire Thy ministers.
- He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «flaming» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.