Fire or A fire?

[Tom]

Hi,

The use of fire and a fire is very confusing.
Can you please shed some light on it?

1- He lit a fire.
or
1- He lit fire.

When and where we use fire and where a fire ?

Thanks in advance

Tom

[Yankee]

Hi Tom

"He lit a fire." is correct.

I would say, when you refer to a fire that's burning in a specific or defined area, you use "a" (i.e. it's grammatically "countable").

- a house fire
- a forest fire

It would be very unusual (but, technically speaking, not wrong) to say "There's fire in the kitchen."

Amy
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Amy
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ESL teacher, translator, and a native speaker of American English