Why this word is great
FIREBRAND — [Noun] A piece of burning wood wielded as a torch, or a person who incites passionate dissent and ignites radical political or social change. From the Middle English fyr-brand, a stark, literal compound equivalent to fire + brand, a burning fragment. Unlike a rabble-rouser, who incites a mob to immediate, aimless violence, or a provocateur, who implies cold, calculated instigation, a firebrand is an open, ideological blaze whose conviction burns to illuminate a path as much as to consume the old order. It is the sizzling pitch of the torch thrust before a marching crowd, the pamphlet that chars the fingers of the reader, the voice that cracks the glacial silence of a complacent age—a dangerous gift, for the light that shows the way must first consume itself.