sear
adjEtymology
From Middle English sere, seer, seere, from Old English sēar, sīere (“dry, sere, sear, withered, barren”), from Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī), from Proto-Germanic *sauzaz (“dry”), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ews- (“dry, parched”) (also reconstructed as *h₂sews-). Cognate with Dutch zoor (“dry, rough”), Low German soor (“dry”), German sohr (“parched, dried up”), dialectal Norwegian søyr (“the desiccation and death of a tree”), Lithuanian saũsas (“dry”), Ukrainian сухий (suxyj, “dry”), Polish suchy (“dry”), Homeric Ancient Greek αὖος (aûos, “dry”). Doublet of sere and sare.
Definitions
Dry
Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.
- The autumn winds rushing / Waft the leaves that are searest, / But our flower was in flushing, / When blighting was nearest.
To char, scorch, or burn the surface of (something) with a hot instrument.
- He likes to sear his steaks while maintaining rareness at the center.
- I will sear the skin from your flesh. You will die a thousand deaths!
- When you drop the tuna onto the pan, the outside will sear and cook quickly while leaving as much of the center as possible in its raw state.
To wither
To wither; to dry up.
- The spring and summer of 1936 brought to the Great Plains one of those terrible periodic droughts that sear the crops and convert the “short-grass country” into a desert.
- The early morning sun had begun to sear the grass.
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To make callous or insensible.
To mark permanently, as if by burning.
- The events of that day were seared into her memory.
A scar produced by searing
Part of a gun that retards the hammer until the trigger is pulled.
A surname.
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for sear. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA