Scorching

How to spell scorching

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce scorching

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does scorching mean?

1. adjectiveExtremely hot, to the point of burning or feeling unbearable.
2. verbBurning or searing the surface of something with intense heat.

Scorching in a sentence

• adjective

  The scorching afternoon sun kept everyone indoors with the blinds drawn.

• verb

  The careless cook left the iron flat on the shirt, scorching the collar.

• adjective

  She crossed the scorching sand quickly to reach the shaded boardwalk.

• verb

  The drought was scorching the grass to a dry brown across the whole field.

Where does scorching come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

The base word scorch first appears in Middle English around the late 1300s, and its precise origins are a little tangled, which is why scholars hold it with some caution. The leading view traces it to a Scandinavian source related to Old Norse skorpna, meaning 'to shrivel up' or 'be dried out by heat', the same family that gives us words about things going stiff and crisp. A competing strand connects it to Old French escorchier, 'to strip off the skin', from Late Latin excorticare (ex- 'off' plus cortex 'bark or rind'), though that French line more properly belongs to the unrelated sense of flaying. By the time it settled into English, scorch had fixed on the idea of burning or searing a surface without consuming it fully, as a hot iron browns cloth. The -ing form then took on a vivid figurative life, describing weather, pace, and criticism that feel intensely hot. The spelling keeps the plain -ch ending of scorch, so there is no hidden 't' before it.

How the word is built

• scorch (to burn the surface)
• -ing (present participle / adjective suffix)