1
as in volcanoes
a potentially explosive place or situation
officials sought to calm the situation, which had grown into a tinderbox
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2
as in crises
a time or state of affairs requiring prompt or decisive action
while the country's prime minister was meeting with the U.S. president, a political tinderbox was igniting at home
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Example Sentences
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Recent Examples of tinderboxes
Unlike natural thinning, large fire-resilient trees are typically high-graded for felling in Jackson, creating tinderboxes of 300 to 500 mostly juvenile trees per acre.
—
John P. O’Brien, Mercury News, 13 Sep. 2025
John P. O’Brien, Mercury News, 13 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for tinderboxes
Noun
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The Philippines sits along the Ring of Fire, a 25,000-mile (40,000-kilometer) arc of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean that hosts more than half of the world’s volcanoes.—
Brandon Miller,
CNN Money,
30 Sep. 2025
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Today, programs such as the USGS Volcanic Hazards Program and the Global Volcanism Program focus on preparation by monitoring active volcanoes through a variety of techniques.—
The Editors,
JSTOR Daily,
25 Sep. 2025
Noun
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That move set in motion two decades of big inflations, serial currency and banking crises, and debt defaults.—
Shawn Tully,
Fortune,
8 Oct. 2025
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Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman was a leader of the Janjaweed militia, which killed hundreds of thousands of members of Darfur’s non-Arab population in the early 2000s, sparking one of the world’s gravest and most enduring humanitarian crises.—
Jeronimo Gonzalez,
semafor.com,
7 Oct. 2025
Noun
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Our institutions – businesses, universities, and society – stand at this crossroads.—
Jim Edwards,
Fortune,
1 Oct. 2025
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That geography has long placed the Central Asian nation at a crossroads, straddling both Europe and Asia.—
Nina Subkhanberdina,
CNN Money,
30 Sep. 2025
Cite this Entry
“Tinderboxes.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/tinderboxes. Accessed 9 Oct. 2025.
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