Sample Sentences for
combustion
(editor-reviewed)

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  • •
    There is a danger of spontaneous combustion of these ingredients.
    combustion = burning
  • •
    Spontaneous combustion is a real thing.  (source)
  • •
    Such is the nature of combustion in pure oxygen.  (source)
    combustion = the act of burning
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  • •
    The straw seats of the car hovered on the edge of combustion; the woman next to me perspired delicately for a while into her white shirtwaist, and then, as her newspaper dampened under her fingers, lapsed despairingly into deep heat with a desolate cry.  (source)
    combustion = catching on fire (an exaggeration)
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    The mood around him was charged, combustible.  (source)
    combustible = excited
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    The can of tear gas sails toward us from the cops. It lands beside the patrol car. I jump off and pick up the can. Smoke whizzes out the end of it. Any second it'll combust.  (source)
    combust = start to burn
  • •
    "Fire" meant gathering up a pile of sticks in a village that had already been gathering firewood for all the years since God was a child, picking its grounds clean of combustibles as efficiently as an animal combing itself for lice.†  (source)
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    That's copper powder combusting with oxygen!†  (source)
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    Every choice I've made since my life spontaneously combusted has been questioned.†  (source)
  • •
    In places where the trees still kept their leaves, they seemed to have undergone an alteration of their substance from the point at which they were touched by the sun's light, still, at this hour in the morning, almost horizontal, as it would be again, a few hours later, at the moment when, just as dusk began, it would flame up like a lamp, project afar over the leaves a warm and artificial glow, and set ablaze the few topmost boughs of a tree that would itself remain unchanged, a sombre incombustible candelabrum beneath its flaming crest.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "in-" in incombustible means not and reverses the meaning of combustible. This is the same pattern you see in words like invisible, incomplete, and insecure.
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    Soon enough the fire is burning fiercely with the sheaves of papers, as too much goes in at once, the flames nearly dying out from the smothering; but then in a combustive rush they begin leaping up and out, to lick the underside of the marble mantel.†  (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-ive" converts a word into an adjective; though over time, what was originally an adjective often comes to be used as a noun. The adjective pattern means tending to and is seen in words like attractive, impressive, and supportive. Examples of the noun include narrative, alternative, and detective.
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    There seemed to be a problem with the gas lines that fed the building, for periodically the scent of uncombusted gas permeated the halls.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "un-" in uncombusted means not and reverses the meaning of combusted. This is the same pattern you see in words like unhappy, unknown, and unlucky.
  • •
    Mal'akh hurried now into the lab and retrieved the Pyrex jug of Bunsen-burner fuel—a viscous, highly flammable, yet noncombustible oil.†  (source)
    standard prefix: The prefix "non-" in noncombustible means not and reverses the meaning of combustible. This is the same pattern you see in words like nonfat, nonfiction, and nonprofit.
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