the.com/burner
A phone with no past, no future, and excellent reasons to exist.
means A cheap, disposable prepaid phone bought to be used briefly and thrown away, valued precisely because it isn't tied to your identity.
from From "burn" — the old slang sense of destroying evidence or getting rid of something fast, plus the agent suffix "-er" that turns a verb into the thing that does it (as in "toaster" or "sprinkler"). The phone is a "burner" because you metaphorically burn it after use. The word rode into wider speech on crime dramas and hip-hop, where a phone you could ditch was a tool of the trade; "burner" had also long meant a gun in some slang, so the air of disposable danger came pre-installed.
- drug trade
- Coined by dealers, popularized by The Wire
- prepaid origins
- No contract means no name attached
- burner accounts
- The internet's version of a fake mustache
- kitchen meaning
- Also the spot heating your forgotten soup
- festival slang
- Burning Man attendees proudly call themselves burners
burner phone — disposable mobile device used by criminals and activists to avoid tracking, popularized by tv show the wire (2002-2008)
burner account — throwaway social media profile on twitter, reddit, instagram created for anonymous posting without accountability
hot burner — active cooking element on a stove that reaches 400°f+, standard kitchen appliance since the 1900s