The Collaborative International Dictionary
Incendiary \In*cen"di*a*ry\, a. [L. incendiarius, fr. incendium a fire, conflagration: cf. F. incendiaire. See Incense to inflame.]
Of or pertaining to incendiarism, or the malicious burning of valuable property; as, incendiary material; as incendiary crime.
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Tending to excite or inflame factions, sedition, or quarrel; inflammatory; seditious.
--Paley.Incendiary device, a device designed to set a structure on fire; a firebomb.
Incendiary shell, a bombshell. See Carcass, 4.
Wikipedia
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires or destroy sensitive equipment using fire (and sometimes used as anti-personnel weaponry), that use materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often known as bombs, they are not explosives but in fact are designed to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start and or maintain the reaction. Napalm for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a 'gel' to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time frame than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression.
Usage examples of "incendiary device".
The average teenage boyis enough of a menace to society without knowing howto make an incendiary device.
That's where he got the magnesium that he used to construct the incendiary device that started the fire.
The small but powerful incendiary device he had dropped under a car at the end of the north face of the building in his guise as the old man erupted with a white and green flash into the night.
Within an hour, a laboratory check of the burned debris proved the fire was due to a magnesium incendiary device.
A savagely grinning Mohawk wrestled with a man on one of the rocket tubes, and somehow an incendiary device in the other man's pocket became ignited.
The metal box that contained the encryption OTPs and other classified material had an inbuilt incendiary device that would destroy the contents with a satisfying bang if it were opened incorrectly.
They passed through a metal detector, an incendiary device detector, a weapon identifier, and a body scanner, all before being cleared through entry level.