SCORCH • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Scorch

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/skɔrtʃ/ Listen

verb

Scorch v. t. (past & past part. scorched; pres. part. scorching)

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 singèd air Never scorch thy tresses fair."

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."

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

Scorch v. i.

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."

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

To ride or drive at great, usually at excessive, speed; applied chiefly to automobilists and bicyclists. (Colloq.)

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Etymology of 'Scorch'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Scorch" Quotes from Famous Books

... see Ravenna burn, Flame into heaven, and scorch the flying clouds; I'd choke her streets with ruined palaces; I'd hear her women scream with fear and grief, As I have heard the maids of Rimini. All this I'd sprinkle with old Guido's ...

— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... it," quoth she, "in Apocryphal Writ"— And the Devil stoop'd down, and kiss'd her; Not Jove himself, when he courted in flame, On Semele's lips, the love-scorch'd Dame, ...

— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb

... not the keen sting of him scorch up the land? Hath not the young bread of our bellies been slain? I, Bakahenzie, have seen it! ...

— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle

... war flunged off'n the bluff we hed squinched the fire ter pledjure Bob, ez he war afeard Santy Claus would scorch his feet comm' down the chimbley,—powerful lucky fur we uns; the fire would ...

— The Christmas Miracle - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... slopes, rather than while speeding along the solitary road which snakes across them to the mountains, because the great gift of the bicycle consists to my mind in something apart from mere rapid locomotion; so much so, indeed, that those persons forego it, who scorch along for mere exercise, or to get from place to place, or to read the record of miles on their cyclometer. There is an unlucky tendency—like the tendency to litter on the part of inanimates and to dulness on that of our fellow-creatures—to ...

— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

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