noun

• 1A place, event, or time at which trouble, such as violence or anger, flares up.

  ‘the flashpoint of the conflagration is just blocks away’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The season's main violence flashpoints were before, during and after games against Hartlepool, Bury, and Carlisle.’
  • ‘Politics here have long been a flashpoint for violence.’
  • ‘Christmas is often a flashpoint for domestic violence due to increased drinking, tension over money and contact with family members.’
  • ‘It's been a flashpoint for violence since the United States invaded.’
  • ‘The post-Cold War need for mobile, flexible forces to deal with threats and flashpoints that can flare up at a moment's notice has placed a new emphasis on airlift.’
  • ‘His intervention has helped ensure that violent flashpoints have not spun out of control.’
  • ‘The cable wars in the city have reached a new flashpoint.’
  • ‘Although there are flashpoints of conflict all over the country there is no national policy on how to tackle them.’
  • ‘The frequency of incidents raises serious concern because the area is known as a possible flashpoint for regional conflict.’
  • ‘Only Berlin continued to be a flashpoint until the superpowers reached an understanding about the two Germanies.’
  • ‘While the League of Ireland has never had a strong culture of violence, most of the flashpoints that have occurred have involved supporters from one or both of these clubs.’
  • ‘The answer, I believe, is often that these disagreements occur in cases that not only present difficult legal questions, but also are flashpoints for underlying conflicts involving basic values and beliefs.’
  • ‘Edwards explores how a single rugby match proved to be one of the most significant flashpoints in Welsh history.’
  • ‘Yet what is true for us seems just as accurate when we look across the globe - particularly to critical international flashpoints.’
  • ‘I said, ‘Mr. President as long as there are checkpoints, there are flashpoints.’’
  • ‘Child custody and visitation rights are becoming flashpoints in our society: Men are desperate to be a part of their children's lives.’
  • ‘Environmentalism has become one of the hottest cultural flashpoints in the battle between red and blue America.’
  • ‘One of the flashpoints is the precautionary approach.’
  • ‘There were flashpoints: most notably when the board tried to rubberstamp massive bonuses for the very people responsible for screwing the company up.’
• 2Chemistry
  The temperature at which a particular organic compound gives off sufficient vapor to ignite in air.

  ‘this particular resin is very volatile and has a fairly low flashpoint’

  More example sentences

  • ‘They had routinely heated paraffin oil with a flashpoint of 175 degrees centigrade in its baking tins to stop pies sticking.’