These words relate to various ways in which something can be set on fire or made to burn, literally to figuratively. Kindle suggests the need for some preparatory effort or action before combustible material will start to burn.

• He kindled a fire by setting a match to the sticks; A smouldering cigarette can kindle a devastating bushfire.

In reference to people, the word indicates the act of arousing, stimulating or exciting.

• The boy’s interest in science was kindled by his visit to the laboratory; The speaker’s eloquence kindled a lively enthusiasm in the audience.

In the sense of burning or applying great heat, fire has numerous applications, both technical and figurative. One can fire a furnace, fire a gun, fire the pottery in a kiln, fire a haystack. Metaphorically, it can have much the same meaning as kindle , but with the suggestion of a sudden burst.

• His imagination was fired by what he had read; The coach fired the team with a determination to win the premiership.

This compares with an analogous, chiefly literary use of the word inflame to mean exciting to violent emotion or activity; The crowd was inflamed by the brutality of the police. In medical usage, however the word denotes a condition of actual heat, swelling and soreness in some part of the body: an inflamed ulcer, complicated by infection.

Ignite is almost entirely restricted to the technical sense of a rapid and sometimes violent burning of something that has been exposed to a critical temperature by one means or another.

• An electric spark ignites the petrol in a car engine; A time fuse ignited the light explosives; Spontaneous combustion ignited the heap of oil-soaked rags in the basement.

Light has a double reference both to heat and to illumination. One can speak of lighting a fire or a furnace and of lighting a lamp, with the knowledge that one result more or less accompanies the other, as when an electric current ignites the filament in an evacuated glass bulb, making it glow brightly.