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tinder.

Small dry sticks and finely-divided fibrous matter etc., used to help light a fire.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈtɪn.dəː/Received-Pronunciation[ˈtʰɪn.dəː]Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɪn.dɚ/General-American[ˈtʰɪ̟n.dɚ] ~ [ˈtʰɪ̟n.dɹ̩]General-American
  1. Small dry sticks and finely-divided fibrous matter etc., used to help light a fire.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English tinder, tunder, tender, tonder, from Old English tynder, from Proto-Germanic *tundrą, *tundrǭ (“tinder”). Compare Saterland Frisian Tunder (“tinder”), Dutch tonder (“tinder”), German Zunder (“tinder”), Swedish tända (“to light, to set on fire”). More at tind.

verb/ˈtɪn.dəː/Received-Pronunciation[ˈtʰɪn.dəː]Received-Pronunciation/ˈtɪn.dɚ/General-American[ˈtʰɪ̟n.dɚ] ~ [ˈtʰɪ̟n.dɹ̩]General-American
  1. To set fire to; torch.

    transitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English tinder, tunder, tender, tonder, from Old English tynder, from Proto-Germanic *tundrą, *tundrǭ (“tinder”). Compare Saterland Frisian Tunder (“tinder”), Dutch tonder (“tinder”), German Zunder (“tinder”), Swedish tända (“to light, to set on fire”). More at tind.

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.