five-alarm

adj — 2 senses

five-alarm

adj

1

Firefighting, Government The highest priority category of a multialarm fire.

2

Broadly Having a high intensity or extreme heat.

And the hundred-thirty-pound Rich LeFevre, in six hundred seconds, inhaled one and a half gallons of five-alarm chili.2007, Steve Rushin, The Caddie Was a Reindeer: And Other Tales of Extreme Recreation, →ISBN, page 304:
Instead, I only worked the Five Alarm cases—high-profile murders—and for those I exclusively partnered with Honey.2013, Ed Kovacs, Burnt Black: A Cliff St. James Novel, →ISBN, page 17:

1 more example

As Democrats have said to me, if you say everything’s a five-alarm fire, then nothing’s a five-alarm fire, right? They’re going to be cautious about where they pick their moments.2024 December 7, Zachary B. Wolf, “What will be the signature achievement of Trump 2.0?”, in CNN:

Entry derived from the Wiktionary, under licence CC BY-SA 4.0 — list of authors.