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burn down

burn down {v. phr.}

To burn to the ground; be totally gutted by fire.

The old frame house burned down before the firefighters could get to it.

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Source: A Dictionary of American Idioms

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burn up

[burn up] {v.} 1. To burn completely; destroy or be destroyed by fire. * /Mr. Scott was burning up old letters./ * /The house burned up before the firemen got […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

burn out

[burn out] {v. phr.} 1. To destroy by fire or by overheating. * /Mr. Jones burned out the clutch on his car./ 2. To destroy someone's house or business by […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

burn one's bridges

[burn one's bridges] also [burn one's boats] {v. phr.} To make a decision that you cannot change; remove or destroy all the ways you can get back out of a […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

ears burn

[ears burn] {informal} To feel embarrassment or shame at hearing others talk about you. * /Joan overheard the girls criticizing her and it made her ears burn./ * /Joe's ears […] A Dictionary of American Idioms

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"very informal usage in vocabulary and idiom that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical, vivid and ephemeral than ordinary language" (Random House Unabridged Dictionary) - learn ~600 slang expressions

An idiom is

an expression "whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements… or from the general grammatical rules of a language"

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