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)
-
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
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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
-
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:
After the experiments, the researchers rapidly cooled the molten material, producing glass that preserved important characteristics of the melt.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 29, 2026
The sea level is rising at a record pace, driven by warming oceans and glacier melt, according to a UN report.
From Barron's ● Oct. 2, 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
And since the power was bound to go out, it made sense to finish off anything in the freezer that was going to melt or spoil.
From "Two Degrees" by Alan Gratz
Ice cream melts down his daughter’s hand as he tells me about his family’s recent return to the country.
From Slate ● Oct. 28, 2026
Neither one will put a cubic foot of gas in a New England furnace before the snow melts.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 28, 2026
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
“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 Boo Hag howls and thrashes as the skin melts into the tiled floor.
From "The Manifestor Prophecy" by Angie Thomas
Packard Motor Car plunged 50.7%, RCA dropped 31.3%, Montgomery Ward lost 20.5%, International Nickel melted by 17.2% and Consolidated Gas Co. fizzled by 17.1%.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2026
In America, one prosecution case melted on appeal due to violations of the Fifth Amendment rights of the accused against self-incrimination.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 14, 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
Other Iraqis wonder whether the U.S. withdrawal will trigger a repeat of 2014, when Iraqi forces melted away in disarray.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 30, 2026
The apartment was filled with delicious smells—garlic and tomatoes and milky melted cheese.
From "I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919" by Lauren Tarshis
As it moves upward, the surrounding pressure decreases, reducing the amount of oxygen the molten rock can retain.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 29, 2026
Silicates are minerals and molten materials composed primarily of silicon and oxygen, along with other elements.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 29, 2026
The simulations showed that additional oxygen could dissolve into molten material until the system reached equilibrium, a state in which oxygen entering and leaving the melt is balanced.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 29, 2026
They also introduce a possible new factor in volcanic degassing, the process through which gases and other volatile substances escape from molten rock and interact with a planet's atmosphere.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 29, 2026
The black, red, orange and yellow colors are thought to be frozen sulfur, originally spewed from the volcanoes in a molten state with the initial temperatures highest for black deposits and lowest for yellow.
From "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan
This has sped up the melting of glaciers, icefields, snowpacks, and ground that's normally frozen all year.
From BBC ● Oct. 28, 2026
The water reaches Antarctica's coastline through ocean currents that have been altered by climate change, creating conditions that accelerate melting beneath the glacier.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 28, 2026
It’s a lot of talk about who is “all man” from a guy whose hands have been melting for the better part of a year.
From Slate ● Oct. 27, 2026
The enormous amount of melting also temporarily helped ease Switzerland's summer water shortages.
From Science Daily ● Oct. 23, 2026
He pantomimed a dwarf melting in terror, which for some reason the Italian didn’t seem to understand.
From "The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
