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Sear   /sɪr/   Listen
noun
Sear  n.  The catch in a gunlock by which the hammer is held cocked or half cocked.
Sear spring, the spring which causes the sear to catch in the notches by which the hammer is held.



verb
Sear  v. t.  (past & past part. seared; pres. part. searing)  
1.
To wither; to dry up.
2.
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. "I'm seared with burning steel." "It was in vain that the amiable divine tried to give salutary pain to that seared conscience." "The discipline of war, being a discipline in destruction of life, is a discipline in callousness. Whatever sympathies exist are seared." Note: Sear is allied to scorch in signification; but it is applied primarily to animal flesh, and has special reference to the effect of heat in marking the surface hard. Scorch is applied to flesh, cloth, or any other substance, and has no reference to the effect of hardness.
To sear up, to close by searing. "Cherish veins of good humor, and sear up those of ill."



adjective
Sere, Sear  adj.  Dry; withered; no longer green; applied to leaves. "I have lived long enough; my way of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Sear" Quotes from Famous Books



... looking forward to college. He centred on his daughter, a future hope, and on his wife, a present reality and triumph. Over her, in particular, he bent like a flame, a bright flame that dazzled and did not yet sear. He was able, by this time, to coalesce with the general tradition in which she had been brought up—or at least with the newer tradition to which she had adjusted herself; and he was able to bring to bear a personal power the application of which ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... oldness^ &c adj.; old age, advanced age, golden years; senility, senescence; years, anility^, gray hairs, climacteric, grand climacteric, declining years, decrepitude, hoary age, caducity^, superannuation; second childhood, second childishness; dotage; vale of years, decline of life, sear and yellow leaf [Macbeth]; threescore years and ten; green old age, ripe age; longevity; time of life. seniority, eldership; elders &c (veteran) 130; firstling; doyen, father; primogeniture. [Science of old age.] geriatrics, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... landed in Calcutta to the moment when he watched the low coasts of the Ganges delta merge into the horizon far astern, India would not let him alone. He saw poverty such as could scarcely be described, and religious rites the very telling of which might sear the tongue. If China's poor had a certain apathy which seemed like poise, even in their wretchedness, not so India's, but, rather, a slow-moving misery, a dull progress toward nothing better, with only nothingness and its empty ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt

... love, Shall be a wisdom that we set above All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 225 A virtue round whose forehead we enwreathe Laurels that with a living passion breathe When other crowns grow, while we twine them, sear. What brings us thronging these high rites to pay, And seal these hours the noblest of our year, 230 Save that our brothers found ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell

... unseeing eyes! What small tragedies begin with the soup and end with dessert! What heartaches with a salad! Small tragedies of averted eyes, looking away from appealing ones; lips that tremble with wretchedness nibbling daintily at a morsel; smiles that sear; foolish bits of talk that mean nothing except to one, and to that one everything! Harmony, freezing at Peter's formal bow and gazing obstinately ahead during the rest of the meal, or no nearer Peter than the red-paper roses, ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart


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