sear
Part of speech: adj
verb
noun
Morphological type: simple
Etymology: From Middle English sere, seer, seere, from Old English sēar, sīere (“dry, sere, sear, withered, barren”), from Proto-West Germanic *sauʀ(ī), from Proto-Germanic *sauzaz (“dry”), from Proto-Indo-European *sh₂ews- (“dry, parched”) (also reconstructed as *h₂sews-).
Cognate with Dutch zoor (“dry, rough”), Low German soor (“dry”), German sohr (“parched, dried up”), dialectal Norwegian søyr (“the desiccation and death of a tree”), Lithuanian saũsas (“dry”), Ukrainian сухий (suxyj, “dry”), Polish suchy (“dry”), Homeric Ancient Greek αὖος (aûos, “dry”). Doublet of sere and sare.
Inflected forms:
form: searer
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: more sear
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: searest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: most sear
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: sere
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: sare
pos: adj
tags: alternative
form: sears
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: searing
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: seared
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: seared
pos: verb
tags: past
form: sere
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: sare
pos: verb
tags: alternative
form: sears
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: sere
pos: noun
tags: alternative
form: sare
pos: noun
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Dry; withered, especially of vegetation.
pos: adj
examples: There are in all but three vvayes of going thither [to the moon]. […] [The] third, Old Empedocles vvay; vvho vvhen he leaped into Ætna, having a drie ſeare bodie, and light, the ſmoake took him and vvhift him up into the Moone, vvhere he lives yet vvaving up and dovvne like a feather, all foot and embers comming out of that cole-pit; our Poet met him, and talkt vvith him.
The autumn winds rushing / Waft the leaves that are searest, / But our flower was in flushing, / When blighting was nearest.
gloss: To char, scorch, or burn the surface of (something) with a hot instrument.
pos: verb
tags: transitive
examples: He likes to sear his steaks while maintaining rareness at the center.
I will sear the skin from your flesh. You will die a thousand deaths!
When you drop the tuna onto the pan, the outside will sear and cook quickly while leaving as much of the center as possible in its raw state.
I often will sear steaks, move them to a cooler side, then use the hot side to grill or sauté vegetables, make a sauce in a cast-iron skillet, or grill some fruit for dessert while the steak finishes.
gloss: To wither; to dry up.
pos: verb
examples: The drought was so severe as to sear the grass and the leaves of maple trees which had grown well for two years, standing in sward land by the roadside, and yet the corn, within ten feet, on the subsoiled land, did not roll once in the whole season, even at mid-day, and there was scarcely another piece in the neighborhood which escaped serious injury.
The spring and summer of 1936 brought to the Great Plains one of those terrible periodic droughts that sear the crops and convert the “short-grass country” into a desert.
The early morning sun had begun to sear the grass.
She might just as easily have been a goddess of the harvest, since the ancient Greeks sowed in the fall and reaped in the spring before the dry heat of summer could sear the crops in the fields.
gloss: To make callous or insensible.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
gloss: To mark permanently, as if by burning.
pos: verb
tags: figuratively
transitive
examples: The events of that day were seared into her memory.
gloss: A scar produced by searing
pos: noun
Derived words: ensear
redsear
reverse-sear
searwood
Translations: