harassing fire
noun · n
Simple meaning
Fire designed to disturb the rest of enemy troops and to curtail movement and to lower enemy morale.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
herasihngfyerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
hɚˈæsɪŋˈfaɪɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
Fire designed to disturb the rest of enemy troops and to curtail movement and to lower enemy morale
n
A form of psychological warfare in which an enemy force is subjected to random, unpredictable and intermittent small-arms or artillery fire over an extended period of time (usually at night and times of low conflict intensity) in an effort to undermine morale, increase the enemy's stress levels and deny them the opportunity for sleep, rest and resupply.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Fire designed to disturb the rest of enemy troops and to curtail movement and to lower enemy morale
Used this way, harassing fire is a specialist word with a faintly unfavourable edge. This is a military use: it belongs to service and operational language.
- Emotional tone
- Slightly negative
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Moderate
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Critical or judgemental
- Usage feel
- Clinical and detached
Where it naturally appears
- Military
- Historical writing
- News/reporting
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.