Meaning
Being attacked or, in the dominant modern sense, subjected to sustained harsh criticism or hostile public scrutiny. The construction 'come under fire' is especially common for people or institutions facing a wave of blame, while phrases like 'calm under fire' keep the older battlefield flavour of composure amid actual danger. Dominant in news registers, where it almost always means criticism rather than gunfire; the literal sense lives on in military history. Regional use: General English (military origin).
Origin
A gunnery phrase: 'fire' has meant the discharge of guns in English since the 1580s, and to be under fire was to stand within range of enemy shot. It was ordinary battle vocabulary by the Napoleonic era, and the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for fire documents the phrase with nineteenth-century military quotations, one attributed to the Duke of Wellington. The idiom scholar Christine Ammer notes that it 'once meant only to be within range of enemy guns', before softening figuratively into meaning 'criticized or held responsible'. Neither Ammer nor the dictionary sources consulted fixes a precise birth date for the figurative sense; it was established in journalism by the early twentieth century (Henri Barbusse's 1917 novel Under Fire, though titled for the literal sense, shows how current the phrase was), and criticism is now the commonest use.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- came under fire
- come under fire
- under constant fire
- under heavy fire
Usage Examples
- The airline came under fire for charging service personnel excess baggage fees.
- Her handling of the merger kept her under fire from investors for most of the spring.
- The head teacher stayed calm under fire, fielding hostile questions for a full hour.