barn burning
Torching agricultural buildings
Barn burning refers to the deliberate arson of barns, historically associated with rural vengeance, labor disputes, or racial terrorism in the American South.
The term gained literary weight from William Faulkner's 1939 short story depicting a sharecropper who burns his landlords' barns as acts of class resentment.
In casual use, barn burning (or barnburner) describes something explosively exciting or intense: That game was a real barn burner.
- arsonCriminal deliberate burning
- flamesVisible burning combustion
- hayDried feed crop
- livestockDomesticated farm animals
- FaulknerAmerican modernist author
up in flames · Southern Gothic · revenge · smoke · embers · ashes · farmstead · torching · matches · kerosene · night · silhouette · feuding · fire insurance · insurance · dead of night · crackling · timber
- rural crimescattle rustling, horse theft, poaching, rustling, water theft
- arsonarson, arsonist, arson investigator, arson investigation, attempted arson
barn burninglightning strike
Atmospheric electrical discharge
natural disaster · spontaneous combustion · electrical fire · act of God · wildfire
barn burningbarn raising
Collective agricultural structure assembly
construction · building · rebuilding · homesteading · erecting
barn, burning, barns, burn, burns, burned, burnt, burner, burners