Picture heat touching a surface and stopping there. The shirt keeps its shape, the wall stays standing, the leaf is still a leaf — but the colour has changed to brown or black. That shallow, colour-changing burn is the whole word. Everything else scorch does is that same picture moved somewhere new: onto skin, onto a field of grass, onto a road left behind by something very fast, or onto a person hit by very sharp words.
From the word’s history
From Middle English scorchen (to make dry, to parch), perhaps related to Old Norse skorpna (to shrivel up). The old idea of being dried and shrivelled by heat sits neatly under the modern picture of a surface that browns without burning away.
來自中古英語 scorchen(弄乾、烤乾),可能跟古諾斯語 skorpna(縮乾、皺起來)有關。這個「被熱抽乾、縮起來」的老意思,剛好墊在今天的畫面底下:表面變褐變脆,但東西沒有燒掉。
Wiktionary entries for scorch, supplied in this packet as etymology_text (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:793353461 and 793360212)
登入就可以看每一支怎麼連回核心畫面。
原始詞典資料10 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法,摘錄並精簡格式,我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的;有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
scorchnoun/skɔːtʃ/
- 1
A slight or surface burn.
- 2
A discolouration caused by heat.
- 3
biologybotanymedicineBrown discoloration on the leaves of plants caused by heat, lack of water or by fungi.
scorchverb/skɔːtʃ/
- 1
To burn the surface of something so as to discolour it
- 2
To wither, parch or destroy something by heat or fire, especially to make land or buildings unusable to an enemy
- Lashed by mad rage, and scorched by brutal fires.
- 3
(To cause) to become scorched or singed
- 4
To move at high speed (so as to leave scorch marks on the ground, physically or figuratively).
- Men on cycles, lean-faced, unkempt, scorched along every country lane, shouting of unhoped deliverance, shouting to gaunt, staring figures of despair.
- England delivered an impressive statement of intent in the Rugby World Cup opener by scorching to a 69-7 victory against the United States in front of a record crowd of 42,723 in Sunderland.
- 5
To burn; to destroy by, or as by, fire.
- Power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
- the fire that scorches me to death
- 6
To attack with bitter sarcasm or virulence.
- 7
datedTo ride a bicycle furiously on a public highway.
- I may not scorch on thee again—thou'rt pinched, my silent steed!
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary,已精簡格式;依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用,改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。