fuse

noun

1. A wick or cord used to convey flame to gunpowder, a bomb, or similar explosive.

   “The Government, having lit the fuse, is not going to be allowed to flee the explosion.”

2. An otherwise stable arbitrarily long repeating pattern that, when perturbed from one end, destructively carries that perturbation at a constant speed to the other end.
3. (alt-of, alternative, proscribed, sometimes)Alternative spelling of fuze, a detonator, any mechanism igniting an explosive substance or device.
4. (figuratively)A tendency to lose one's temper.

   “When talking about being laid off, he has a short fuse.”

5. A kind of match for starting a fire:
6. A kind of match for starting a fire:
7. A device to prevent excessive overcurrent from overload or short circuit in an electrical circuit, containing a component that melts and interrupts the current when too high a load is passed through it.

verb

1. To furnish with a fuse, to install a fuse on.
2. (alt-of, alternative, proscribed, sometimes)Alternative spelling of fuze, to equip with a detonator.
3. (transitive)To liquify by heat; melt.

   “Pure sodium is a lustrous metal... it fuses very easily at a temperature of 97°, and distils at a bright red heat (742°...)”

4. (transitive)To melt together; to blend; to mix indistinguishably.

   “That each, who seems a separate whole, Should move his rounds, and fusing all The skirts of self again, should fall Remerging in the general Soul, Is faith as vague as all unsweet: […]”

   “All these were based broadly on the management framework of the old companies, except that the former Southern and North Eastern Areas of the old L.N.E.R. became separate management units, while the former L.M.S.R. and L.N.E.R. lines north of the Border were fused into a self-contained Scottish Region.”

   “Actually the New York, New Haven and Hartford, Boston & Maine, Maine Central, Bangor & Aroostook and Rutland Railroads already are doing so; if they are fused, they would have a combined route mileage of 5,269 and assets totalling £318 million, [...].”

5. (intransitive)To melt together.
6. (ergative)To combine through nuclear fusion.
7. (transitive)To furnish with or install a fuse in (a circuit) to protect against overcurrent.
8. (intransitive)To stop operating, having been protected against overcurrent by its fuse blowing.

   “When the bath overflowed, the downstairs lights fused, so we need a torch.”

9. To form a bicyclic compound from two similar or different types of ring such that two or more atoms are shared between the resulting rings.