[f. FIRE sb. + ENGINE.]
1. A machine for throwing water to extinguish fires.
c. 1680. Sir S. Morland’s Pumps, Broadside, Brit. Mus. 816 m. 10. 90. For a Fire Engin with one Pair of Handles … Twenty three pound.
1725. Desaguliers, Exper. Philos. (1744), II. 505–519, heading. Mr. Newsham’s Fire-Engine.
1755. Franklin, Letter to M. Dalibard, Wks. 1887, II. 405. We say glass is impermeable to water, and yet a stream from a fire-engine will force through the strongest panes of a window.
1806. O. Gregory, Mech. (1807), II. 175. Fire engine [is] the name now commonly given to a machine by which water is thrown upon fires to extinguish them.
1836. Dickens, Sk. Boz, Our Parish, i. The services of that particularly useful machine, a parish fire-engine, are required.
2. A steam-engine. Obs. exc. local.
1722. Barnes, in Brand, Hist. Newcastle (1789), II. 685, note. The charge of water was therein calculated as if to be drawn by horses, whereas now it may be done much cheaper by help of a fire engine.
1750. Franklin, Letter to Jared Eliot, 13 Feb., Wks. (1887) II. 164. The water is grown too hard for them, and they waited for a fire-engine from England to drain their pits.
1806. O. Gregory, Mech. (1807), II. 353. This [i.e., the steam-engine] has often been called the Fire-engine, because of the fire used in boiling the liquid.
1867. W. W. Smyth, Coal & Coal-mining, 6. Newcomen appears to have been assisted by the suggestions of Dr. Hooke, the secretary of the Royal Society, and to have first tried his ‘fire-engine’ on the large scale at a colliery near Wolverhampton.
1880. W. Cornw. Gloss., Fire-engine, a steam-engine.
† 3. A heating apparatus. Obs. rare.
1708. J. Chamberlayne, The Present State of Great-Britain, I. i. iii. (1743), 9. One Fire-Engine conveys warm Air to every individual Part of the Machine [Lombe’s machine for thrown silk].
