fire drill

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

fire drill (plural fire drills)

1. An organized practice to prepare occupants of an office, school or other public building for evacuation in the event of a fire.

   Our teacher said that will have a fire drill today.

2. (idiomatic, US) Any pointless, unproductive, useless, or chaotic activity.

   Since they've changed the standards again, our previous efforts now just amount to a fire drill.

3. A fire-starting tool consisting of a wooden rod and some primitive means of rapidly rotating the rod on a flat surface like a drill until tinder can be ignited.
   • 1999, Paul Douglas Campbell, Survival Skills of Native California, →ISBN, page 4:

     There is no machine on earth so potent, yet so simple and elegant, as the two sticks of the Native American fire drill;

• (evacuation practice for a fire): fire practice, disaster drill, emergency drill
• (pointless activity): Chinese fire drill, Polish fire drill
• (fire starting tool): bow drill, firestick, hand drill, pump drill

• bow drill
• hand drill
• pump drill
• strap drill

• “fire-drill”, in Cambridge English Dictionary, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, 1999–present.
• “fire-drill”, in Collins English Dictionary.
• “fire drill”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.