SCORCHED

scorched

(adjective) having everything destroyed so nothing is left salvageable by an enemy; “Sherman’s scorched earth policy”

adust, baked, parched, scorched, sunbaked

(adjective) dried out by heat or excessive exposure to sunlight; “a vast desert all adust”; “land lying baked in the heat”; “parched soil”; “the earth was scorched and bare”; “sunbaked salt flats”

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Adjective

scorched (comparative more scorched, superlative most scorched)

Dried, damaged or burnt by exposure to sunlight or heat.

Verb

scorched

simple past tense and past participle of scorch

Source: Wiktionary


SCORCH

Scorch, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Scorched; p. pr. & vb. n. Scorching.] Etym: [OE. scorchen, probably akin to scorcnen; cf. Norw. skrokken shrunk up, skrekka, skrökka, to shrink, to become wrinkled up, dial. Sw. skråkkla to wrinkle (see Shrug); but perhaps influenced by OF. escorchier to strip the bark from, to flay, to skin, F. écorcher, LL. excorticare; L. ex from + cortex, -icis, bark (cf. Cork); because the skin falls off when scorched.]

1. To burn superficially; to parch, or shrivel, the surface of, by heat; to subject to so much heat as changes color and texture without consuming; as, to scorch linen. Summer drouth or singed air never scorch thy tresses fair. Milton.

2. To affect painfully with heat, or as with heat; to dry up with heat; to affect as by heat. Lashed by mad rage, and scorched by brutal fires. Prior.

3. To burn; to destroy by, or as by, fire. Power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. Rev. xvi. 8. The fire that scorches me to death. Dryden.

Scorch, v. i.

1. To be burnt on the surface; to be parched; to be dried up. Scatter a little mungy straw or fern amongst your seedlings, to prevent the roots from scorching. Mortimer.

2. To burn or be burnt. he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scoch into Hester's breast, as if it had been red hot. Hawthorne.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



RESET




Word of the Day

7 November 2024

ERASE

(verb) remove by or as if by rubbing or erasing; “Please erase the formula on the blackboard--it is wrong!”


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Coffee Trivia

The expression “coffee break” was first attested in 1952 in glossy magazine advertisements by the Pan-American Coffee Bureau.

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