firetrap

noun

fire·​trap ˈfī(-ə)r-ˌtrap 

: a place (such as a building) apt to catch on fire or difficult to escape from in case of fire

Examples of firetrap in a Sentence

The factory was a firetrap and dozens of workers died before rescuers could reach them.

Recent Examples on the Web

Nothing seemed suspicious at first; old-fashioned frame houses were notorious firetraps. —Mara Bovsun, New York Daily News, 26 Jan. 2025

The Eagle reported that there were at least 1,000 such firetraps in Brooklyn. —Mara Bovsun, New York Daily News, 26 Jan. 2025

Kitchen vents blocked by a wooden frame created a firetrap that stranded the two women in an upstairs bedroom, prosecutors said. —Christina Coulter, Fox News, 29 Aug. 2024

Nearly four decades later, CBGB, the stale-air firetrap on New York’s Lower East Side that launched the Ramones and the Talking Heads, shut down. —Justin Davidson, Curbed, 16 Oct. 2024

The Centre for Effective Altruism’s first office had been in an overcrowded firetrap of a basement beneath an estate agent’s office. —Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The New Yorker, 8 Aug. 2022

For the next several weeks, Babb searched for another insurer, but other carriers, too, saw her house as a firetrap. —Jeffrey Ball, Fortune, 28 Sep. 2021

Five months after the trial began, jurors found Harris not guilty, while only 10 of the 12 jurors could agree Almena was guilty of negligence in turning the warehouse into a deadly firetrap. —Megan Cassidy, SFChronicle.com, 4 May 2020

In 2009, after years of inaction, government agencies evacuated the bunkhouse, which had devolved into a fetid firetrap of neglect. —Dan Barry, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2020

Word History

First Known Use

1881, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for firetrap

• handicap
• overlap
• thunderclap
• wiretap
• app
• cap
• chap
• clap
• crap
• flap
• frap
• gap

Kids Definition

firetrap

noun

fire·​trap ˈfī(ə)r-ˌtrap 

: a building or place that is apt to catch on fire or is difficult to escape from in case of fire