scorching
Americanadjective
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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
A Rover's Story
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I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake, 1906
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The School for Invisible Boys
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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
Decades later, on a scorching afternoon last month, she maneuvered her pickup to a bridge overlooking the Rio Grande’s sandy riverbed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 21, 2026
A scorching hot planet nearly 320 light-years from Earth has provided the first direct evidence for a fundamental assumption about how planets form.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 14, 2026
It’s not necessarily a perspective one expects to be accompanied by the kind of scorching guitar riffs adorning “Date Night.”
From Salon ● Sep. 22, 2026
Reporter Joseph Chamberlin spent hours roaming the streets, often finding himself dodging showers of scorching sparks.
From "The Great Fire" by Jim Murphy
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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.
