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Green’s Dictionary of Slang

fire v.¹

1. to give someone a venereal disease.

1515–16		Skelton Magnyfycence line 2269: Some rybbys of the motton be so ranke That they wyll fyre one ungracyously in the flanke.
c.1600–20		‘As I was Riding’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) V 13: Her Ct is grown so common; / have a care of your tarse, / Lest she fire it with her arse, / for she is free for all men.
1623		Dekker Wonder of a Kingdom IV i: He keepes a whore indeede, [...] he may be fir’d.
c.1640		J. Day Parliament of Bees 10: Hee’s burn’d himselfe (perhaps), [...] For he both keeps and is maintaind by th’ stews [...] He may be fir’d; his rotten hives are not.
1653		Mercurius Democritus 21-28 Sept. 388: The third [Justice] was Mr. Faggot-stick, a worm-eaten Wood-monger, who some said with P—y’s nose did fire his Maide.
1660		Man in the Moon 4 26 Nov. 29: [Those] that venter to fraight this Vessel be carefull their goods be not fired and themselves endangered if they come in her Fore-castle. For never any man did yet come nigh her, But by her heat she set his Goods on fire.
1707		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy IV 323: To the Tavern we went, / A Curse on the Place; / For her Love was so hot, / It soon fir’d my A—.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 83: A young Lady of the Town, who had fired her Tail by an immoderate Resignation of her Favours.
1761		Memoirs of [...] Jane D****s 73: Pox take her, says the colonel, if I don’t mistake her, she gave me a good winter’s firing.
1788		Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies 111: She has lately been fired [...] but knowing the use of murcury, she applied it in such a manner that she procured an effectual salivation.
1848		Satirist & Blade (Boston, MA) 19 Feb. n.p.: The slaver rounded to, and gave the Digby a red-hot shot between wind and water, which fired the latter, so that it is unfit for further service.
c.1850		Peeping Tom (London) 19 75/2: ‘I don’t care [i.e. about your character] [...] if you haven’t fired me’.

2. to contract venereal disease.

1733

Laugh and Be Fat 83: A young Lady of the Town, who had fired her Tail by an immoderate Resignation of her Favours, have privately taken a Lodging in the same House.