brûler

To burn, both literally (brûler du bois, se brûler la main) and figuratively — brûler d'impatience (to be burning with impatience), brûler les étapes (to skip steps by rushing). The traditional spelling with the circumflex, still by far the more common form in everyday writing.

• Le feu brûle dans la cheminée. — The fire is burning in the fireplace.
• Elle brûle d'impatience de partir en vacances. — She's burning with impatience to go on vacation.
• Attention, la casserole est brûlante ! — Careful, the pot is scorching hot!

Brûler d'impatience/d'envie (to be burning with impatience/desire) uses de before the noun, not pour — a common calque error modeled on the English 'burning for.'

Often confused with bruler.

• expression "Brûler les étapes" — A documented idiom from 17th-century military usage (brûler l'étape, to march past a scheduled rest stop without stopping), generalized by the 20th century to mean rushing a process by skipping intermediate steps.
• expression "Brûler la politesse" — A documented idiom attested since 1807 (D'Hautel's Dictionnaire du bas langage, 1808), meaning to dash off abruptly or slip away without the expected parting courtesies.