1. scorch - Noun
2. scorch - Verb
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.
To affect painfully with heat, or as with heat; to dry up with heat; to affect as by heat.
To be burnt on the surface; to be parched; to be dried up.
To burn or be burnt.
Source: Webster's dictionaryGenius hath electric power Which earth can never tame, Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower, Its flash is still the same. Lydia Maria Child
Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight. Robert Graves
Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things. George Eliot
Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows. Lucretius
I don't want to produce a work of art that the public can sit and suck aesthetically.... I want to give them a blow in the small of the back, to scorch their indifference, to startle them out of their complacency. Ingmar Bergman
In this winter night, long and ample for bitter memories, many a widow who lost her husband in the war and is now left alone will press her palms to her ageing face; and in the nocturnal darkness the burning tears, as bitter as wormwood, will scorch her fingers. Mikhail Sholokhov