What's the difference between scorch and sear?

Scorch


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To burn superficially; to parch, or shrivel, the surface of, by heat; to subject to so much heat as changes color and texture without consuming; as, to scorch linen.
  • (v. t.) To affect painfully with heat, or as with heat; to dry up with heat; to affect as by heat.
  • (v. t.) To burn; to destroy by, or as by, fire.
  • (v. i.) To be burnt on the surface; to be parched; to be dried up.
  • (v. i.) To burn or be burnt.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) This is especially the case when it is confronted with regimes such as those of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin that feel no compunction over a scorched-earth response to insurgency and do so with calculation.
  • (2) He unleashes a scorching drive from about 18 yards, which Joe Hart tips wide via his right post.
  • (3) It may have been like punk never ‘appened, but you caught a whiff of the movement’s scorched earth puritanism in the mocking disdain with which Smash Hits addressed rock-star hedonism.
  • (4) Nobody is sure what dangerous chemical imbalance this would create but the Fiver is convinced we'd all be dust come October or November, the earth scorched, with only three survivors roaming o'er the barren landscape: Govan's answer to King Lear, ranting into a hole in the ground; a mute, wild-eyed pundit, staring without blinking into a hole in the ground; and a tall, irritable figure standing in front of the pair of them, screaming in the style popularised by Klaus Kinski, demanding they take a look at his goddamn trouser arrangement, which he has balanced here on the platform of his hand for easy perusal, or to hell with them, for they are no better than pigs, worthless, spineless pigs.
  • (5) They’re cracking open the baijiu ,” said John Delury, a China expert from Yonsei University in Seoul, referring to China’s throat-scorching national tipple.
  • (6) The main building is wrecked, the control tower holed and on the scorched tarmac are the remains of 21 planes – much of Libya's small commercial fleet.
  • (7) Click here to view In The Other Woman, Cameron Diaz , Leslie Mann and Kate Upton team up to declare an all-out, scorched-earth War Of The Scorned Blondes against philandering husband Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.
  • (8) Oscar Wilde's grave in Paris has put up with a lot in its first century - the flying angel headstone has been castrated (twice), commemorative candles have scorched the front, and multilingual graffiti are regularly scrawled over the tomb.
  • (9) Then Belt, belts one to center that is scorched but lands safely in the glove of Jay.
  • (10) Flames could be seen through the scorched windows and billowing out of the roof of the sandstone building on the corner of Renfrew Street and Scott Street.
  • (11) Also, a wildfire in a rugged area near the Canadian border chased hundreds of people from their homes and burned 10 to 12 structures, and a blaze north-east of Colville scorched almost five square miles and forced evacuations at campgrounds in the area.
  • (12) City had to grind out this latest success, initially scorched by the pace of Yannick Bolasie, Wilfried Zaha and Bakary Sako and grateful to Joe Hart’s flying save to deny Jason Puncheon after the interval.
  • (13) It is in two senses a dazzling work, which leaves the mind's eye scorched into strangeness.
  • (14) Despite a slightly esoteric focus on the importance of adobe housing, House of Earth also includes graphic sex, including "a scorching lovemaking scene on a hay bale".
  • (15) And unlike beach sand, the sands here, made up of eroded gypsum crystals, do not get scorching hot in the sun and can usually be walked on in bare feet, even on the hottest days.
  • (16) Ground crews and water-dropping helicopters tamed the biggest blaze in Los Padres national forest, north of Los Angeles, by Wednesday after it scorched 1,858 acres.
  • (17) We shall pursue our own scorched earth policy and burn Jim Crow to the ground..." His elders shut him up.
  • (18) Martin's clothing was scorched by gunpowder while the bullet hole in his chest was not, he said, proving that there was "at least an inch, or two or three" separating his clothing from his skin.
  • (19) I said: ‘This is the game-changer.’ Sharapova didn’t win a game.” Earlier in the Open, after Williams had struggled through a match, she left the stadium and headed to a practice court where she spent the next hour with Mouratoglou hitting in the scorching afternoon sun trying to find the right feeling on her swing.
  • (20) When police later searched the scorched apartment, they found newspaper clippings about the murders of the Turkish-German businessmen, copies of the Pink Panther DVD, and the Česká pistol.

Sear


Definition:

  • (a.) To wither; to dry up.
  • (a.) Alt. of Sere
  • (a.) To burn (the surface of) to dryness and hardness; to cauterize; to expose to a degree of heat such as changes the color or the hardness and texture of the surface; to scorch; to make callous; as, to sear the skin or flesh. Also used figuratively.
  • (n.) The catch in a gunlock by which the hammer is held cocked or half cocked.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Just a few months ago, a director-level position job for Sears was floated by me from the department store chain's headquarters in Chicago.
  • (2) They revealed that Lance Corporal Craig Roberts, who died in searing temperatures on the Brecon Beacons, had been about to begin a new post in the office of the education secretary.
  • (3) It feels very much like the work of a cook born in Bordeaux, the place where they like to top their cote de boeuf with bone marrow, and sear it fast so that inside it is still the colour of raging knife cut.
  • (4) A confrontation between French and German passengers appears to resonate with disputes and tensions within the family; archive film shows searing images from the second world war, from Israel and Palestine, from the modern-day Odessa Steps.
  • (5) A Communist party-controlled newspaper has launched a searing attack on Donald Trump after the president-elect threatened a realignment of his country’s policies towards China, warning the US president-elect: “Pride goes before a fall.” The Global Times, a notoriously rambunctious state-run tabloid, was writing after Trump reignited a simmering row with Beijing by suggesting he might recognise Taiwan , which China regards as a breakaway province, unless Beijing agreed a new “deal” with his administration.
  • (6) That searing experience continues to shape the thinking of a generation of policymakers and peacemakers anxious that there should not be "another Rwanda" on their watch.
  • (7) Or take a free elevator ride to the roof of the old Sears Roebuck building ( southsideonlamar.com ) which is now loft housing.
  • (8) Through the searing summer heat, the Mexican immigrant to California’s Central Valley and his family endured a daily routine of collecting water in his pickup truck from an emergency communal tank, washing from buckets and struggling to keep their withering orchard alive while they waited for snow to return to the mountains and begin the cycle of replenishing the aquifer that provides water to almost all the homes in the region.
  • (9) A t the end of the long day's walk under the searing Moroccan sun, across endless expanses of sand, the Berbers slowed their camel and stopped.
  • (10) Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution documents the first months of the uprising, and The Crossing: My Journey to the Shattered Heart of Syria describes in searing prose her return visits to the “liberated” but bombed and fiercely contested north.
  • (11) First there was the one whipped up by the invasive glare of the TV cameras, zooming in on the respective engagement rings of Sears and Ester Satorova, Berdych’s fiancee.
  • (12) His condemnation of existing arrangements is the most searing criticism from the business establishment since Richard Lambert, then director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, two years ago warned bosses risked being viewed as "aliens [living in] a different galaxy from the rest of the community" because of the ever widening gulf between shopfloor and boardroom wages.
  • (13) The British No1 gestured to his courtside box, where Sears was filmed mouthing what appeared to be the words “fucking have it you Czech flash fuck” apparently in the direction of Berdych’s team.
  • (14) A theoretical analysis of pathway and kinetic cooperatively in this system is presented in the following paper (Sears, D.W., and Beychok, S. (1977), Biochemistry 16 (following paper in this issue)).
  • (15) Perhaps it was the searing heat , or perhaps it was the American magician dangling outside Tower Bridge in a box.
  • (16) Boeing is said to hope that Mr Sears's guilty plea will put an end to the scandal and revive the refuelling contract, which was put on ice by the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
  • (17) But first, following the searing criticism he directed at UK Athletics for its “ridiculous and wrong” decision to omit the union flag from the vests to be worn by British athletes , the 28-year-old talks far more personally and bitingly.
  • (18) Republicans stake their claim as Christie stresses credentials at CPAC Read more The 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference was in full swing, and at the end of Thursday afternoon, the crowd got what it had come for, in spades: three searing speeches from the main stage razzing President Barack Obama, damning “radical Islamic terrorism” and celebrating the United States as the best place on Earth in history.
  • (19) Documents found in the rubble of the Tazreen factory showed that garment users supplying goods to Walmart and Sears were using the plant at the time of the fire.
  • (20) Razor-sharp analysis and forensic questioning are her weapons, while jargon-free indignation sears her criticisms on the public mind.