Other forms: scorched, scorching, scorches
To scorch is to burn a surface so that it browns or blackens. An iron left too long on a shirt.
The damage is to the outside only, which is what separates scorching from burning through: a scorched lawn is brown, not gone. Sun and heat do it to grass and skin alike. The word gives English scorched earth, a military policy of destroying everything as you retreat, now used about ruthless tactics of any kind. Informally, to scorch along a road is to travel very fast indeed.
1verbscorchTo burn the surface of something so that it discolours.
“She scorched the collar with a hot iron.”
Scorch is shrivelling. Middle English scorcnen meant to dry out or to parch, perhaps an alteration of a word taken from Old Norse skorpna, to shrivel up.
Old Norse
skorpna — to shrivel up
Middle English
scorchen
English, today
scorch
Built from
From Middle English scorchen, scorcnen (“to make dry; parch”), perhaps an alteration of earlier scorpnen, from Old Norse skorpna (“to shrivel up”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA