scorch

Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
scorch/skɔːtʃ/

▶verb

• 1 become burnt or cause to become burnt on the surface or edges.

  ■ (often as adj. scorched) cause to become dried out and withered as a result of extreme heat.

• 2 informal move very fast.

▶noun

• 1 the burning or charring of the surface of something.

• 2 Botany a form of plant necrosis marked by browning of leaf margins.

– derivatives
scorching adjective,
scorchingly adverb.

– origin ME: perh. rel. to ON skorpna ‘be shrivelled’.