flaring

adj

1. Having a tendency of streaming, flapping, or spreading broadly as if within a current of air or in outer space.

   “Mazie and Nick have trouble, in the first place, making the fire. They finally start a great flaring fire instead of the small steady flame that Prudence requires for cooking.”

verb

1. (form-of, gerund, participle, present)present participle and gerund of flare

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)The act of something that flares.

   “[…] those shootings of stars, eclipses of the moon, howlings of dogs, and flarings of candles, carefully noted and interpreted by the oracular sibyls […]”

   “Now the moon illumined them with bluish gleams, and anon the fires of aurora borealis seemed to cover them with the flarings of a great conflagration.”

   “The rigid features of the deceased ecclesiastic, and his recumbent foi-m, dressed out in all the pomp of ecclesiastical vestments, the chanting priests, the flaring of countless torches, and the long train of black-hooded brethren that filed along through the midst of the bustling throng, formed, altogether, a picture of a very impressive character.”

2. (countable, uncountable)The deliberate open-air burning of natural gas that is generated as a by-product of various petrochemical processes, especially oil extraction; gas flaring.

   “Separate research suggests a switch from the flaring of methane to venting may be behind some of these vast outpourings. Flaring is used to burn unwanted gas, putting CO₂ into the atmosphere, but is easy to detect and has been increasingly frowned upon in recent years.”