Dictionaries › English

melt

Pronunciation: /mɛlt/

The English word “melt” has 14 meanings listed here.

verb

  1. To change (or to be changed) from a solid state to a liquid state, usually by a gradual heat.
  2. To dissolve, disperse, vanish.
  3. To soften, as by a warming or kindly influence; to relax; to render gentle or susceptible to mild influences; sometimes, in a bad sense, to take away the firmness of; to weaken.
  4. To be discouraged.
  5. To be emotionally softened or touched.
  6. To be very hot and sweat profusely.

noun

  1. Molten material, the product of melting.
  2. The transition of matter from a solid state to a liquid state.
  3. The springtime snow runoff in mountain regions.
  4. A melt sandwich.
  5. Rock showing evidence of having been remelted after it originally solidified.
  6. A wax-based substance for use in an oil burner as an alternative to mixing oils and water.
  7. A soft, soppy, or overly emotional person.
  8. A centre-left or liberal person, when in opposition to a leftist; (especially) a critic of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour Party.

Etymology

From Middle English melten, from a merger of Old English meltan (intransitive) and mieltan (transitive), both meaning “to melt, digest,” from Proto-West Germanic *meltan and *maltijan, from Proto-Germanic *meltaną and *maltijaną, both from Proto-Indo-European *(s)meld- (“melt”). Cognate with Icelandic melta (“to digest”).

Keep exploring: in the interactive dictionary every word of a definition is a link. Open “melt” there

More English words

About this dictionary

The English dictionary on Glottosphere has 650,529 entries with a page. Browse the English dictionary.

Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.