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sweltering

[swel-ter-ing]

Example Sentences Origin

adjective

suffering oppressive heat.

characterized by oppressive heat; sultry.

Origin:
1565–75; swelter + -ing²

Related forms

swel·ter·ing·ly, adverb

un·swel·ter·ing, adjective

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Sweltering is always a great word to know.

So is ort. Does it mean:

a scrap or morsel of food left at a meal.

a printed punctuation mark (‽), available only in some typefaces, designed to combine the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!), indicating a mixture of query and interjection, as after a rhetorical question.

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Example Sentences

Twenty-four hours a day in this past summer's sweltering heat, crews of ironworkers, masons.

For their entire lives, they'll dine off tales of sweltering summers in the blueberry fields.

If the burly-and surly-turbaned doormen deem you respectable, you can escape from the city's sweltering heat into its lobby.

EXPAND

Twenty-four hours a day in this past summer's sweltering heat, crews of ironworkers, masons.

For their entire lives, they'll dine off tales of sweltering summers in the blueberry fields.

If the burly-and surly-turbaned doormen deem you respectable, you can escape from the city's sweltering heat into its lobby.

From the sweltering tropics to backyard gardens, colorful birds dominate this collection of stunning videos.

Sweltering inland temperatures are averaged with cooler coastal weather.

Hundreds of drivers congregate in sweltering desert heat to race candy.

Of course, the sweltering season, which is only going to get hotter as.

But so many more, it seemed, withstood the sweltering heat.

Baobab trees such as this one can provide some relief from the sweltering heat.

Moscow is currently sweltering under record temperatures.

It is that time of year when reports come in of children dying of hyperthermia, after being locked in sweltering cars.

In the midst of sweltering heat waves, air conditioning can be a lifesaver, protecting against heat stroke and hyperthermia.

Hundreds of thousands of commuters were stranded, many in sweltering subway stations and aboard trains stopped by flooded tracks.

And sweltering in the dark has been only part of the problem.

In addition to the discomfort, it can keep swimmers out of the water for several sweltering weeks.

We had spent the morning sweltering behind a barred door, with daylight only through chinks and our one high window in the gable.

Survivors said they shouted and pounded the sides of the sweltering truck as the air grew thinner.

They had many benefits in the sweltering heat of the rugged border region.

It was a sweltering night and therefore no time to judge of the efficiency of the ventilating system.

It was hazy, already sweltering and the billowing emission from a steampipe swirled depressingly.

Released six hours later, the three rights workers drove off into the sweltering darkness.

Sometimes you need to stun the senses by taking a hot bath when it's sweltering outside.

COLLAPSE

Dictionary.com Unabridged

verb (used without object)

to suffer from oppressive heat.

verb (used with object)

to oppress with heat.

Archaic. to exude, as venom.

noun

a sweltering condition.

Origin:
1375–1425; late Middle English swelt(e)ren (v.), equivalent to swelt(en) to be overcome with heat (Old English sweltan to die; cognate with Old Norse svelta, Gothic swiltan) + -eren -er⁶

Related forms

un·swel·tered, adjective

Link To sweltering

Collins

World English Dictionary

sweltering (ˈswɛltərɪŋ)

—*adj*
	oppressively hot and humid: a sweltering day

'swelteringly

—*adv*

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

swelter

c.1403, frequentative of swelten "be faint (especially with heat)," c.1386, from O.E. sweltan "to die," from P.Gmc. *swel- (cf. O.S. sweltan "to die," O.N. svelta "to put to death, starve," Goth. sviltan "to die"), originally "to burn slowly," hence "to be overcome with heat or fever;" also the source

EXPAND

of O.E. swelan "to burn," from PIE base *swel- "to shine, burn" (see Selene). For specialization of words meaning "to die," cf. starve.

COLLAPSE

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Related Words

sultry

sweltry

Matching Quote

"Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat-Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names."

-Henry David Thoreau

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