fire
Budget cuts may force the city to fire fire fighters.
The sentence describes a city possibly being forced to dismiss firefighter employees because of budget cuts.
Meanings (pronounced /ˈfaɪər/)
to dismiss someone from employment
- The CEO threatened to fire anyone who leaked the news.
- He was fired after just three weeks on the job.
the phenomenon of combustion — flame, heat, and light produced by burning material
- The campfire crackled into the night.
- Firefighters arrived within minutes.
Word origin
From Old English fȳr, from Proto-Germanic *fōr, from Proto-Indo-European *péh₂wr̥. The verb sense ('to dismiss from employment') is much later — first recorded in 19th-century American English, possibly from earlier 'to discharge a firearm,' with the metaphor extended to discharging a worker.
Fun fact
The slang 'You're fired!' became globally famous through the American TV show 'The Apprentice' (2004), but the phrase itself is over a century older — first attested in print around 1885, possibly from the metaphor of being 'discharged' from a firearm or of being thrown out as you would throw out a piece of unwanted firewood.