Literally, it can mean to extinguish a flame or fire
Metaphorically, a fire is an emergency and to “put out a fire” means to fix an emergency
FloridaFlamingoGirl•
To stop a fire from burning.Â
CatLoliUwu•
putting out a fire means to extinguish it put an end to a fire
Philly_Supreme•
“Put out fire” means to extinguish a fire. Fire=gone=no more. You’d probably only hear this in an instruction manual, in conversation you should say “put out the fire”.
Btw your question should be “what does it exactly mean?”
Or to sound even better, “What does it mean, exactly?”
mayfleur•
It can either mean:
1) Stopping a fire from continuing to burn.
2) Trying to quickly fix a large number of problems. If someone tells you “I’ve spent all day at work putting out fires”, it means there were a lot of issues they had to solve very quickly.
hunglowbungalow•
Make 🔥 not exist anymore
brokebackzac•
It can also mean to step in and put an end to a fight or argument.
ThirdSunRising•
To put out a fire is to handle a very urgent problem requiring immediate action. It’s a metaphor.
pisspeeleak•
People here are giving you good context, but I'll extrapolate a bit
You want someone to put out a literal fire: "put out the fire!"
You're talking about spending your time cleaning up lots of messes (screw ups, arguments ect..) : "I've been putting out fires"
"put out fire" on its own is awkward, you generally have to adapt the phrase for it to make any sense
ColdDistribution2848•
It can also be used as an idiom (putting out fires) meaning "dealing with urgent problems"
KingAshleyWilliams•
If it's used idiomatically I'd expect it to mean, "to solve this specific problem" and have absolutely nothing to do with an actual fire.