This performance is 🔥🔥🔥.

[GeneD]

There is an emoji of fire () which you probably use or have seen and which obviously means "great". For example: This performance is . If you wanted to use a word instead of the emoticon, which one would you choose? In Russian, it's natural to say "огонь" ("fire") but I doubt that it's natural for English, at least I've never heard or seen it. The closest word to the meaning of the emoji I can recall might be a "blast". Would it be natural to say "This performance is a blast"? Are there more suitable choices? The closer the meanings of the emoji and the word, the better.

 

[emsr2d2]

It wouldn't work for a performance but we do say that a person is "on fire" when we mean they are performing something really well.

 

[GeneD]

this track is LIT ������
This is one of the comments to this video. Here's "the track is ������", not a "person". I assumed that I could use the word "performance" instead. Is it wrong?

I can't put the emoji anymore for some reason. The question marks above are bonfires.

 

[Skrej]

'Lit', 'on fire', 'burning up', 'blazing', 'cooking', 'en fuego' and other fire/flame related terms are all current or past slang for expressing something is either done very well or very enjoyable, or as a way of expressing appreciation for something.

As slang, there's a lot of leeway on what you use them with, and it's hard to say what they can or can't modify.

Edit: I think I've also heard things like 'burning down the place/house/building'.

This band is lit! They're totally on fire, and they're burning up the place!

 

[GeneD]

Oh, now I see. Those emoticons were a supplement to the word "lit"! Yesterday, when I saw that post, I didn't know what "lit" meant and looked it up in a dictionary and it gave the meaning "literature". I thought that maybe you, native English speakers, call something cool "literature" :-D and that fire emoji meant some word by itself. Why didn't I figure out that it was the past participle of "light"!

This band is lit! They're totally on fire, and they're burning up the place!

How would you use "cooking" and "blazing" talking about this band? "They are cooking/blazing"?

"En fuego", I guess, is used the same as "on fire", right?

 

[Skrej]

I don't use all those terms myself, I've merely heard them, but yes, I think you could use them as you suggest.

Yes, 'en fuego' is simply a direct literal translation of Spanish for 'on/in fire'. As such, I suspect it's probably not used that way in Spanish, but the phrase was popular in the late 80's or 90's, as I recall.

 

[Raymott]

I would have guessed it means 'hot'. But these emoticons are sometimes app-specific. And perhaps the youngsters don't use 'hot' anymore.

 

[emsr2d2]

It's used in sport. I watch (and play) a lot of tennis and I hear and use, for example, "Wow, Nadal is absolutely on fire!" If I were writing that in a WhatsApp message, it would probably be ":shock:, Nadal's absolutely on ��". As you can see, I would use the emoticon for the word "fire" but not the whole phrase "on fire". I would write "on" as text.

Edit: Hmm, I tried to copy and paste the little fire logo from post 1 into my sentence above but it's come out as two question marks. Not sure why.
However, I notice that in the emoticon list on this forum, the name of this one: nfire: is "on fire".