From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishflashpointflash‧point /ˈflæʃpɔɪnt/ noun [countable] 1 PLACEVIOLENTa place where trouble or violence might easily develop suddenly and be hard to control Hebron has been a flashpoint for years.2 [usually singular] technicalTMT the lowest temperature at which a liquid such as oil will produce enough gas to burn if a flame is put near it
Examples from the Corpus
flashpoint• With food a more valuable commodity here than gold, the port is a flashpoint between marauding gangs of looters and bandits.• During these years race became the cultural flashpoint, and most political careers were founded on a rhetoric of purity and exclusion.• Vukovar was one of the early flashpoints in the former Yugoslavia.• Certain key variables highlighted by Grant and Wallace correspond to those factors considered especially crucial by the flashpoints model.• Such variables are too specific to industrial relations to be included in the flashpoints model of public disorder. 