Molten

How to spell molten

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce molten

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does molten mean?

1. adjectiveMade liquid by very high heat, as with metal, glass, or rock.

Molten in a sentence

• The foundry workers poured molten steel into the moulds.

• Streams of molten rock ran down the side of the volcano.

Where does molten come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Molten is the surviving strong past participle of the verb 'melt', which comes from the Old English meltan, meaning 'to become liquid' or 'to dissolve'. That verb traces back to a Germanic root linked to ideas of softening and flowing, and is a distant relative of the Greek meldein, 'to melt'. In older English a verb like this formed its past participle by changing the vowel and adding -en, so meltan gave 'molten', much as 'swell' gives 'swollen' and 'freeze' gives 'frozen'. Over the centuries the ordinary past participle 'melted' took over for everyday use, leaving 'molten' stranded as a specialised adjective for substances that have been liquefied by intense heat, such as metal, rock, or glass. The spelling trap is the unstressed second syllable, which sounds like a faint 'uhn' and tempts writers toward 'moltan' or 'moltin'; remembering the -en ending shared with 'frozen' and 'swollen' keeps it correct.

How the word is built

• molt- (variant of melt, to liquefy by heat)
• -en (old strong past-participle suffix)