melt
1 Americanverb (used without object)
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melts,
present (3rd person singular)
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melted,
past participle, past
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molten,
past participle
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melting
present participle
-
to become liquefied by warmth or heat, as ice, snow, butter, or metal.
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to become liquid; dissolve.
Let the cough drop melt in your mouth.
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to pass, dwindle, or fade gradually (often followed byaway ).
His fortune slowly melted away.
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to pass, change, or blend gradually (often followed byinto ).
Night melted into day.
- Synonyms:
- fade
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to become softened in feeling by pity, sympathy, love, or the like.
The tyrant's heart would not melt.
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Obsolete. to be subdued or overwhelmed by sorrow, dismay, etc.
verb (used with object)
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melts,
present (3rd person singular)
-
melted,
past participle, past
-
molten,
past participle
-
melting
present participle
noun
-
the act or process of melting; state of being melted.
-
something that is melted.
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a quantity melted at one time.
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a sandwich or other dish topped with cheese and heated through until the cheese melts.
a tuna melt.
noun
verb
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to liquefy (a solid) or (of a solid) to become liquefied, as a result of the action of heat
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to become or make liquid; dissolve
cakes that melt in the mouth
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(often foll by away) to disappear; fade
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(foll by down) to melt (metal scrap) for reuse
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(often foll by into) to blend or cause to blend gradually
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to make or become emotional or sentimental; soften
noun
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the act or process of melting
-
something melted or an amount melted
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To change from a solid to a liquid state by heating or being heated with sufficient energy at the melting point.
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See also heat of fusion
Synonym Usage
Melt, dissolve, fuse, thaw imply reducing a solid substance to a liquid state. To melt is to bring a solid to a liquid condition by the agency of heat: to melt butter. Dissolve, though sometimes used interchangeably with melt, applies to a different process, depending upon the fact that certain solids, placed in certain liquids, distribute their particles throughout the liquids: A greater number of solids can be dissolved in water and in alcohol than in any other liquids. To fuse is to subject a solid (usually a metal) to a very high temperature; it applies especially to melting or blending metals together: Bell metal is made by fusing copper and tin. To thaw is to restore a frozen substance to its normal (liquid, semiliquid, or more soft and pliable) state by raising its temperature above the freezing point: Sunshine will thaw ice in a lake.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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meltabilitynoun
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melternoun
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meltingnessnoun
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meltableadjective
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nonmeltableadjective
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nonmeltingadjective
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unmeltableadjective
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unmeltedadjective
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unmeltingadjective
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meltinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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meltsimple
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meltssimple
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have meltedperfect
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have moltenperfect
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has meltedperfect
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has moltenperfect
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am meltingprogressive
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are meltingprogressive
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is meltingprogressive
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have been meltingperfect progressive
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has been meltingperfect progressive
Past
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meltedsimple
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had meltedperfect
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had moltenperfect
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was meltingprogressive
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were meltingprogressive
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had been meltingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of melt1
First recorded before 900; Middle English melten, Old English meltan (intransitive), m(i)elten (transitive) “to melt, digest”; cognate with Old Norse melta “to digest,” Greek méldein “to melt”
Origin of melt2
First recorded in 1575–85; variant of milt
Explanation
To melt means to fade away slowly and disappear, like a snowman in the middle of the Sahara. "I'm melting! I'm melting!" — Those are the feeble cries of ice cubes on a hot summer day and Wicked Witches doused with water by a meddling girl from Kansas. To melt a stick of butter into liquid form sounds like an excellent idea for your popcorn — but perhaps not for your diet. And when your puppy looks up at you with those big brown puppy eyes, your heart probably melts — even if he just ate your slippers.
Vocabulary lists containing melt
Beowulf vocabulary
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Cheesy Goodness
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Words for Cheese Writers
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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.
See Examples For:
As temperatures rise, glaciers and ice sheets lose mass, while sea ice continues to melt.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 12, 2026
Sea levels are rising at a record pace, driven by warming oceans and glacier melt, according to an August UN report.
From Barron's ● Oct. 8, 2026
“It is hard to grasp these melt rates and it hurts to see the ice disappearing,” said Matthias Huss, head of the Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 1, 2026
Jackson said it was a “scary situation” as the window started to melt.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 24, 2026
Hot enough to melt the fuel rods and allow them to sink right through the bottom of the reactor.
From "Meltdown" by Deirdre Langeland
Amungme environmental activist Adolfina Kum stresses how important the peak is to her people - and how traditions and cultural foundations risk being shattered as the ice melts.
From BBC ● Sep. 25, 2026
For now, the results highlight the importance of continued satellite monitoring of Arctic sea ice, along with the energy balance that controls how the ice melts and reforms.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 23, 2026
“Truly melts in your mouth,” Shawn Molko, a Toronto-based singer and content creator, said in a butter-tasting video that helped fuel the trend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
The onion — and yes, I use a whole medium white onion, because we are committing to the bit — melts into the background, helped along by both onion and garlic powder.
From Salon ● Sep. 14, 2026
She yells, but another stream of water melts from the vents and envelops both her and Woo.
From "Kwame Crashes the Underworld" by Craig Kofi Farmer
As the nuclear fuel melted, it combined with zirconium, a highly resistant metal used in the fuel's protective outer layer.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2026
The subtext of their question is the worry that, just as Icarus soared so high that the sun melted his wings of wax, a market that rises too far is prone to crashing.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 12, 2026
“I’m not a big fan of eating too much on game day so when I saw that melted cheese and a whole lot of carbs, I was ready to chow down,” he said this week.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 12, 2026
AI left academia’s brightest mathematicians slack-jawed when it found solutions to problems that once melted their brains.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
“Yes! The actual, literal sun. His father made him wings out of feathers and wax, and he flew into the sun, and the wings melted and he died.”
From "Impossible Creatures" by Katherine Rundell
Anorthosite is classified as an intrusive igneous rock, meaning it forms when molten material cools and solidifies beneath Earth's surface.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 11, 2026
Half the table orders Diet Coke, the other water with lemon; someone requests a skillet of molten white queso.
From Salon ● Oct. 7, 2026
"Polymer source material is abundantly available from consumer waste, and our catalyst system, aluminum molten salts, is very cheap," Qiu said.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 21, 2026
ORNL's Tao Wang contributed expertise in molten salt chemistry, while ORNL's Logan Kearney supplied high-density polymers and provided expert guidance on possible routes for converting them into higher-value products.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 21, 2026
Immediately all the past miserable months fell away from him as he stood breathing the hot, well-remembered odor of molten gold and hearing the chiming of a little hammer.
From "The Golden Goblet" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw
Although Antarctica's geography allows winter sea ice to expand over enormous distances, it also pushes the ice into warmer latitudes, where melting becomes more likely during summer.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 16, 2026
A South Korean container ship returned on Sunday from a trial voyage through the Arctic, testing an alternative route opened by melting sea ice as conflict in the Middle East disrupts global shipping.
From Barron's ● Oct. 11, 2026
Israeli food isn’t the world’s only culinary melting pot, but it may be the most misunderstood.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 10, 2026
“As a Texan, I am proud of the cultural melting pot that makes our state so great and this collaboration is such a fun example of that.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 8, 2026
For the second time in less than twenty-four hours I had the disturbing sensation that I was melting, and a second later, I opened my eyes at the Academy.
From "Glitch" by Laura Martin
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