5 October 2020
To fire someone is to dismiss them from employment. This use of the verb to fire is a metaphor for discharging a bullet from a gun. But the word itself is much, much older.
The noun fire, meaning combustion, goes back to the Old English fyr. As one might expect, it’s a very common word in the Old English corpus, appearing over 1,600 times. Here’s an example from Beowulf. Hrothgar is speaking to Beowulf at the feast after the warrior has killed Grendel’s mother:
Nu is þines mægnes blæd
ane hwile; eft sona bið
þæt þec adl oððe ecg eafoþes getwæfeð,
oððe fyres feng, oððe flodes wylm,
oððe gripe meces, oððe gares fliht,
oððe atol yldo; oððe eagena bearhtm
forsiteð ond forsworceð; semninga bið
þæt ðec, dryht-guma, deað oferswyðeð.(Now, for a time, is the glory of your might: soon disease or blade will separate you from your strength, or the fire’s embrace, or the flood’s welling, or the sword’s grasp, or the spear’s flight, or the horrors of age; or the brightness of your eyes will fail and dim; at last it will be death that overcomes you, warrior.)
The Old English verb fyrian is much rarer, appearing only twice and rather late in the early medieval period. In Old English the verb meant to provide someone with fire. Here’s one of the two instances, from an eleventh-century confessional and penitential text:
Freoge his agene þeowan, and alese æt oðrum mannum heora þeowan to freote, and huru earme gehergode men; and fede þearfan, and scride, husige and firige, baðige and beddige.
(He should free his own slaves, and ransom from other men their slaves in manumission, and especially destitute, harried men; and feed and clothe the poor, house them and [provide them with] fire, bathe and bed them.)
In the early Middle English period, the verb started to acquire more senses. In a life of St. Margaret of Antioch, from c.1200 and appearing in two manuscripts, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodl. 34 and London, British Library, Royal 17.A.27, it is used to mean to inspire, inflame with emotion:
Heh healent godd, wið þe halewende fur of þe hali gast, moncune froure fure min heorte & te lei of þi luue leiti i mine lenden.
(Oh, savior God, with healing of the Holy Ghost, comforter of mankind, fire my heart and let your love burn in my loins.)
The sense meaning to set something alight is recorded later, but one suspects there are older uses that have been lost to time. It appears c.1387 in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis in a passage about the fall of Troy:
Synon, which mad was here aspie
Withinne Troie, as was conspired,
What time was a tokne hath fired.
(Synon, who was laying a trap here
Within Troy, as had been treacherously planned,
At that time had fired a beacon.)
Firing a gun appears by the opening years of the sixteenth century. Here are a few lines from William Dunbar’s 1508 poem The Goldyn Targe:
Thai fyrit gunnis with powder violent,
Till that reke raise to the firmament.
(One of the things that bugs me about medieval movies is that almost invariably, when archers are given the command to send their arrows downrange, the command that is given is “Fire!” This, of course, is anachronistic. The medieval command would have been “Loose!”)
By the late nineteenth century, fire was being used to mean to eject a person from the premises, as if they were a bullet from a gun. J.A. Dacus’s 1879 Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States uses the verb this way in this passage:
A lady was introduced as Mrs. Kendrick. Mrs. Kendrick said that if the workingmen had their wages reduced, the hardships fell on their wives and children as much as on themselves, and they should not, therefore, be selfish in their indignation, but divide a little of it with the women. Her auditors listened good naturedly for fifteen minutes, but as there appeared to be no chance for recess, she was advised to “hire a hall,” and the chairman was asked to “fire her out.”
And at about the same time, but recorded slightly later, we see the verb being used to mean to dismiss someone from employment. From the Cincinnati Enquirer of 7 September 1879.
Professional Slang [...] Fired, Banged, Shot Out—When a performer is discharged he is one of the above.
So, there you have it, the history of how to fire came to be used in the field of human resources.
Sources:
Dacus, J.A. Annals of the Great Strikes in the United States. Chicago: L.T. Palmer, 1877, 415. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Dictionary of Old English: A to I, 2018, s.v. fyr, n., fyrian, v.
Dunbar, William. “The Golden Targe.” Selected Poems, Priscilla Bawcutt, ed. London, Longman, 1996, lines 238–39, 243.
Fowler, Roger. “A Late Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor.” Anglia, 83. 1965, 29.
Fulk, R.D., Robert E. Bjork, and John D. Niles. Klaeber’s Beowulf, fourth edition. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2008, lines 1761–68, 59–60.
Gower, John. “Confessio Amantis.” The English Works of John Gower, vol 1 of 2. G.C. Macaulay, ed. Early English Text Society (EETS), O.S. 81. London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1900, lines 1172–78, 67. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Mack, Frances May. Seinte Marherete þe Meiden ant Martyr. Early English Text Society (EETS), O.S. 193. London: Oxford UP, 1934, 42. HathiTrust Digital Library.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. firen, v.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, December 2015, s.v. fire, n. and int., fire, v.1.