A firescreen is a large screen, usually of wire or metal, that you stand in front of an open fireplace. Its job is to stop sparks and hot bits of wood jumping out onto the rug or onto people’s clothes, and to stop a small child or a pet walking into the flames. In older houses in cold countries, the fireplace was the heart of the room, so a firescreen was ordinary furniture, not a museum piece. Though actually, some old “firescreens” were pretty cloth on a wooden frame: those were more about hiding an empty fireplace in summer, or keeping the heat off your face, than about catching sparks. The wire or metal kind is the safety one. In Taiwan you almost never see an open fireplace at home, so students meet this word in stories, films, and old British books more than in daily life. It is a quiet household word — not slang, not fancy.