- present participle of scorch.
scorching
Americanadjective
-
burning; very hot.
-
caustic or scathing.
a scorching denunciation.
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of scorching
Explanation
Use the adjective scorching to mean extremely hot. The scorching heat from a wildfire tar on roads and char nearby houses and trees. There's a huge difference between a warm day and a scorching one; the word implies a brutal heat. If the weather is scorching, you'll be desperate for air conditioning, iced drinks, or the relief of a cold shower. You can also use it to mean "harsh," like a critic's scorching review of a really terrible movie. Etymologists suspect that scorching is derived from the Old Norse skorpna, "to be shriveled."
Vocabulary lists containing scorching
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I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
“They are the ones who are going to guide us forward,” the 95-year-old told a crowd, which stood under a scorching sun for the groundbreaking.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 28, 2026
But new observations reveal that the atmospheres surrounding some of these scorching alien worlds can have surprisingly uneven shapes.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026
“A scorching mid-September may enhance the seasonal cliff in power sector gas burns ahead.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 16, 2026
At least 35,000 excess deaths have been linked to the scorching heat waves in Europe over the summer, though that is likely an undercount.
From Salon ● Sep. 5, 2026
They had brought over the fritter and drink stands from the Street of the Turks and the people were in good spirits as they bore the tedium of waiting and the scorching sun.
From "One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
